Far be it for me to criticize the almighty FSF, but it seems like they are being really arrogant here. Correct me if I missed something, but has the GPL ever been tested in court? The FSF is bicckering over little subtleties of how the ASPL license is written, but do they really have any basis to judge? What's ultimately important is how the language of the license would be enforced by a court.
They complain about apple's license but perhaps when push comes to shove the language apple uses will stand up better in court. The language doesn't seem to be trying to keep people from doing what they want with the code, but rather it is trying to guarantee that if somebody releases a modified product that it will remain open. The FSF may see the added verbage to be restrictive but perhaps the GPL's verbage wouldn't hold up in court as well.
The FSF wreaks of the arrogance that comes with the assumption that they are right. I appreciate what the FSF has done and I think that the spirit of the GPL is wonderful, but frankly until you are taking people to court and prooving the validity of the license, don't go criticizing the subtleties of other groups whose hearts appear to be in the right place.
I think I figured it out. Microsoft's definition of the word "Innovate" is the source of all of their problems. They seem to think that Innovate means develop some questionably useful technology and make a hell of a lot of money off of it. They want the freedom to make a hell of a lot of money. They fear that open source threatens their ability to make a hell of a lot of money.
An Open Source programmer isn't necessarily motivated to innovate, true. But what happens if they don't? Let's say that for a moment, every single Linux programmer decided that they were sick of innovating in a way that was beneficial to the vast majority of society. So they decide to just turn Linux into a very souped up screen saver but nothing more. What would happen?
1) People who wanted a robust operating system would pay somebody else to build it
2) Other enlightened folks would decide to take the old Linux and continue innovating along a more practical course
3) Other enlightened folks would work on some other system (FreeOpenNetBSD, etc).
So, how can innovation be stifled? At worst, it is increasin people's expectations of what they should get for the money they spend. And ultimately that encoruages better products at lower prices which is increasing efficiency (and that's pretty innovative).
What I'd like to know is, what were the original rules under which the source code and protocol of SSH were made publicly available? It seems to me that if there was some concern over use of the trademark SSH, restrictions about that should have been included in that license. If you look at different open source licenses, many of them make express stipulations about trademarked names that cannot be used by derivative products.
It seems to me that this is a too little too late scenario. OpenSSH has been around for a long time and he hasn't taken issue with it until now. Now, it could be argues that OpenSSH has had time to build it's own name associated with a certain quality of product, etc. If they were forced to change their name, it might cause confusion for people who wanted to find their product.
Has he made his complaints earlier, OpenSSH would have been named something else, and today we'd all be using an SSH replacement called something else. Sucks to have to go to court over such things, but I think the OpenSSH group has a strong case at this point.
last i checked, it's not illegal for me to go around telling people where to buy drugs. nor is it illegal to write a book telling people how to make pipe bombs. can anybody tell me why Napster is considered differently?
What napster does isn't quite like you telling people where to buy drugs. With napster it is more like you own a giant flea market where everybody is selling drugs. You know it, the cops know it, and everybody who attends the event knows it (which is why they attend). The important point here is that Napster's network and software facillitate the trading.
To illustrate the difference, let's look at lycos' mp3 search. You can do the same sort of searching that can be done through napster, but lycos doesn't provide any facilities for connecting you with the other people. This may seem like a subtle difference, but it is important.
This perfectly illustrates why we don't need to have restrictions on encryption. Let's think about this situation and the facts that we know:
1) The US government is certain that Bin Laden is a backer of terrorists (enough so to bomb sovereign countries).
2) The US government has enough evidence against 4 men to take them into court and prosecute them as terrorists.
Seems to me that they are getting by fine regardless of the encryption. I mean if the encryption was such an issue, how would we have any information about these people? Traditional intelligence gathering and detective work are not dead because of encryption.
There is a major advantage to using a rail gun. Ultimately destructive force is measured by the mass and the velocity of the projectile. Thanks to the joys of physics, the velocity has a whole lot more to do with the amount of kinetic energy you can inflict on a target.
Now, with conventional weapons, you have a serious design problem. To fire a projectile you create a small explosion in the barrel. The larger the explosion, the faster the projectile, but at some point, the explosion is so large that you cannot design a barrel strong enough to contain it (or at least not one that you can tote around on the average tank).
With a rail gun, you have a big advantage in that the force applied to the projectile is applied over the entire length of the barrel. This reduces the stress on the barrel because you can apply the necessary force over a longer period of time. This allows you to achieve higher velocities with lighter barrels which provides two big benefits:
1) more destructive force
2) guns that can be rotated and aimed faster and more accurately
Now of course there are limitations with this too, but it does get you beyond the problems inate in more conventional explosives based ammo.
I've been working on an idea for a game I've titled, Kovas, where it would have a few things that keep it from being zero-sum. It's a standard "conquer the universe" type game, but it has a couple additional aspects that make it different:
1) the universe is a persistent and theoretically limitless space
2) rankings in the game are based on "fealty points". Each planet in the game is worth one fealty point if you control it. Each planet is worth two fealty points if somebody else controls it, but pledges their loyalty to you. So there's an incentive to not just go out and kill everybody.
I do intend for the game to have resource limitations, but as the game goes on and your technology develops, you become more efficient in your use of resources. Furthermore, the limitations on resources are planet by planet, so as the universe expands and players are added, more planets and more resources appear.
Another thing is that technology can be shared in the game, so it encourages players to collaborate with eachother. So, you can develop powerful weapons while another develops powerful armor and combined you can put together some pretty nasty ships.
It seems that the FCC's requirement that broadcasters move to the new digital standard may have an unintended consquence. The consequence is that digital formats offer greater possibility to control/eliminate the ability to copy and time shift materials produced by broadcasters (abilities that have overall lead to the creation of new services and increased consumer choice).
Being that the FCC is a government agency, deriving it's mandate from the citizens, what do you see as the FCC's role in preserving the rights of consumers to copy and time shift broadcasted materials? How do you envision the interaction between the media, the broadcasters, and the viewers in a future where analog is no longer an option?
So let me see if I understand this correctly. All of the industry heavyweights are going to get together and secretly tell eachother AND THEIR COMPETITORS everything that's wrong with their products? I'll believe that when I see it.
What will likely happen is that every bug that comes up will be seriously considered for political and economic fallout and they'll only allow the information that's relatively safe to them get out to this group. So, only the truely innocuous bugs will get dealt with and the big nasty ones will still be out there.
And you know where the nasty bugs will get discussed? Bugtraq!:)
I'd save my money if I was Cisco or Oracle or what have you. The only possible value in this is getting some dirty laundry on your competitors and that's only if their dumb enough to tell you in the first place (and if they are that dumb they'll be dead in a couple years anyhow).
The biggest problem I see with this whole system is the built in assumption that the credit reporting agencies are correct. They are prone to error at rates that I don't recall exactly but I remember being disturbing. If you call up the credit agency to deal with a mistake, they should immediately remove details of the mistake from the report (merely listing that it's being contested), and then give the reporting agency a period of time to proove their claim. If they cannot proove that you did it, then it should be expunged permanently.
Another problem with the system is that there are three major credit reporting agencies. So, you may have a clean slate at one, but the other has red flags all over the place. So you might get your credit checked through one agency and discover everything is fine, but the same check through another agency could turn up problems. In theory the agencies share info but not always.
Personally I recommend that everybody make a point of getting a copy of their credit report on a routine basis. If there is a problem it is much better to see it early on rather than get an unpleasant surprise when you are trying to buy a house, a car, or an education. There's several services out there that offer credit monitoring services that will report problems and give you quarterly updates of your information.
Something to keep in mind here is that although the law is written and backed by the Supreme court, it doesn't mean that it's going to be enforced. More to the point, it doesn't mean it's going to be enforced on those people who have a legitimate reason to bend the rules.
Now, if the State of Virginia has an automated porn sweeper and scoured the networks and drives for people breaking the rules and then immediately and automatically firing them, I'd be much more concerned. In reality though, this law will only be enforced on people who are doing things that they legitimately shouldn't be doing. Do you think a professor doing legitimate research on the history of prostitution is going to get busted? No!
Yes, it is a part of fair use, and yes, they are ignoring that fact. It seems to me that the notion of fair use was established as a trade off between copyright holders and the public. If they are not willing to allow that trade off (i.e. fair use), then they should not be protected under copyright law.
One thing I noticed in the release version of Netscape 6 is that the image management options are gone. You can tell it to not load images or you can tell it to load all images just like previous versions.
One of the features I most love about mozilla is that you can right click on an ad banner and block all images from the originating server. Thus I can go through and block the ads from annoying places like doubleclick, but leave ads if they don't actively annoy me. Of course since ad banners make the net go 'round, AOL can't very well have a netscape that provides the ability to block banners.
Legally they cannot raid your offices and check out what you have. But, what they can do is pressure a company into letting them do so under threat of a suit. They come in and say, let us audit you and if we find anything, we'll be nice and not take all of your money.If you don't play nice, then they get court orders, subpoenas, and they play hardball with you.
If they have to whip out the lawyers and you lose they'll show absolutely no mercy in an effort to make an example out of you. Remember, copyright violations have criminal penalties associated with them, so they can try to put people in jail on top of taking far more money than you would have had to pay had you just let them walk in and audit you. So, no, they technically can't but if you have half a wit of business sense, you'll just let them for fear of the consequences.
Okay, so let's say that in 2005 we've got a 50/50 split between Windows and *nixes. What I expect will happen is that support for some of the major Unixes will fall off as the market consolidates. My guess would be that HP/UX which will be the likely victim of this. Since HP makes its real money on selling hardware, to make their hardware palatable, they'll begin canibilizing HP/UX in favor of Linux which is already getting better support from vendors.
So then even if you have the same 50/50 split between *nixes and windows, I think you'll see Linux slow start to gnaw away at the propertiary unixes. Eventually as these OS's lose market share they'll divert their existing IP and research efforts into Linux (see also SGI). With each fallen Unix variant, more energy will be diverted into making Linux better.
So, if my theory holds up, not to far down the road will be down to four major enterprise OS's: Windows 2000, Linux, Monterrey, and Solaris. So then who's next? Monterrey. IBM has invested much in that product, but they've also invested heavily in Linux. Why waste resources on two development efforts when one is clearly growing and beginning to look like a dominant player. So, monterrey fades, and you are down to three.
Sun has been downplaying Linux on big systems, but as this all evolves, if Linux keeps moving full steam ahead, those arguments will cease to be plausible. Sun may resist eventually, but with the majority of Enterprise unix work running on Linux, it will be hard to argue the business case for backing Solaris any further.
So then it will be just Windows vs. Linux. I dunno, come back here in 10 years and see if I'm right:)
The reason McCain lost was because Bush figured out exactly how to push his buttons, piss him off, and make the campaign a dirty mud slinging fest. It is a well known fact that when campaigns get ugly, independent voters get turned off and don't show up at the polls. So, it is to the advantage of incumbents and party favorites to drag the campaign down into the mud to take away votes from their competitor.
In the case of Bush vs. McCain, Bush put together an ad where he was with some Vietnam vet and got the guy to say that McCain had ignored vets and let them down. McCain was livid. Not only did this break the agreement they had against mud slinging, but he is very sensitive on Veterans issues, and so it was a big blow below the belt.
So, McCain got angry and he went all out after Bush. Bush's camp of course accused McCain's of brining down the level of the campaign, and it turned into a giant mud slinging fest quickly. So, less independents showed up and Bush won it.
Oh, and if you believe Bush's rhetoric about being somebody who will improve the tone of washington politics, just look at how he operated in the Primary to see what a crock that is.
The one point that underpins your assumption is that the Indrema won't have games. Now, the Indrema folks are saying that they have some known developers working on games for their system. We'll soon find out the how notable these games will be.
The one point to be clear on here though is that the Indrema folks realize that games are the key. That's why open source tools is such a big part of their focus. They want to enable individuals and small open source efforts to release games just like the big boys. By lowering the barrier to entry for developers, they intend to have good games by shear force of the size of their developer group.
Now, contrast this to X-box and PS/2. Sony, has released a platform that all of the developers complain about as being too complex to get good performance out of. They decided to whip up a machine that was all bells and whistles but is too hard for developers to make use of. This will hurt them in the long run.
The X-box was targeted at making development easy, but AT A PRICE. Microsoft's business model relies on charging huge fees for their development tools. Granted these tools, if consistent with Microsoft's past work, will be good, but it will keep casual developers and smaller efforts from developing for that platform.
The gamble that Indrema is making is that if they can make developing on the platform open to as many people as possible, they can get more games and more interesting games that wouldn't normally find their way to the traditional platform. This is definitely a gamble, but I think they have a shot, and this is certainly no CD-I:)
I have to say that everything I'm hearing about the Indrema sounds really cool. The thing I'm wondering about though is how much money do they have to push their system? I mean it's all well and good that it can do anything, is expandable, and is open source, BUT, if nobody buys them it will die a quick death.
Now, having expressed that concern, I do realize one comforting thing. Let's say it goes on sale, and only the uber-geeks buy it. Fine, if it is open source, even if Indrema goes bankrupt, somebody's going to be out there writing games, and hacking the damn things. I mean even if Indrema went out of business I'm sure that the few they do sell will thrive.
But enough of my doom and gloom. Good luck to you Indrema. With the right combination of good technology, forward thinking, cash, and a lot of luck, maybe you can pull this off!
Oh and say, what "Major Title" will be coming with it?:)
You bring up a good point. There is also a severe danger in categorizing any illegal drug as being the same as any other. Let's say the DARE team comes in and tells all these kids that Crack is bad and Marijuana will get you addicted the first time you use it. What happens?
Well, invariably, a few of the kids are going to try marijuana. They'll try it, probably like it, and find that they aren't addicted too it. So, they think that maybe the cops are full of it. So, then they try some other things, and soon enough they tread on to the ground of something that is dangerous and addictive.
What kids need is real honest information about the effects of the drugs. They should distinguish between drug use (the occasional drink with friends or a glass of wine with dinner) and drug abuse (binge drinking and full blown alcoholism).
Now, to the credit of these organizations like DARE, they are a branch of a government that has chose to enforce a completely irrational drug policy. They can't go into schools and tell kids the truth and that using drugs isn't wrong but that abusing drugs is. If they did that, the politicians would look like fools and liars, and we can't have that. So what they do tell them is what they have to tell them to keep them out of jail.
Is what this guy did wrong? How do you know? Has it been before a court? The problem is not that he did this, the problem is that he did this, and the postings he made are eliminated from view without any legal review.
Imagine for a moment if documents leaked out from @Home were published in the New York Times. Now, if @home wanted to go after them, they'd have to file a lawsuit and go through numerous hurdles. Even if their suit was successful, the paper was printed, the impact was made. The printing can't be undone and it may be argued that is shouldn't be undone. The legal consequence is paid by the paper for this but what is done is done.
In this case though, @home just has to have a lawyer type up a letter and e-mail it to a few places to have this shut down. There's no judicial order, or oversight of any kind. The yanking of the document was purely based on the whims of the corporation. Unless the ISP feels some moral obligation they aren't going to fight it. And frankly moral obligations don't boost sagging stock prices.
Personally I think that if @home feels they have been so wronged by this, they should go after the guy who did it in court. What he did may or may not be wrong and in doing so he should be aware that he is opening himself up to legal risk. So let that play out. Take it to court and see what the court says. We are giving away the right of judicial review to a bunch of lawyers and word processors. That's a VERY dangerous precedent.
Okay so his proposal is one that won't fly in the United States unless something changes dramatically. But you have to respect the fact that he's willing to take a stand for something he believes in even if it isn't popular. Look at Bush and Gore. They run on the platform that will get them elected. If they thought that proclaiming themselves as canibals would get them into office, they'd be bombarding us with press releases containing great barbequeing recipes for pundits.
See the thing is that Gore is playing to populist rhetoric to win the liberal left voters. He's especially playing it up now because Nader threatens to steal those votes away from him. On the other hand McReynolds is a SOCIALIST. He wants a system like they have in the Scandinavian countries where there is a strong social wellfare system and huge taxes for the rich to pay for it. Personally I agree with him but that's an entirely different discussion.
When hacking is outlawed only outlaws will be hackers.
This is such a patently bad idea. Okay, so we eliminate all public hacking discourse and we prevent law abiding citizens from being able to use and develop hacking tools. The results would be the following:
1) criminal hackers will use encryption and numerous other methodologies to conceal their trade in and development of hacking tools.
2) corporate security managers will be unable to test the security of their own systems.
3) home computer users will be unable to test the security of their own systems.
4) bugs found in common systems will be left unannounced and will be openly exploited by the people mention in point #1 above
I mean can there possibly be a greater recipe for disaster on the Internet? *sigh* You can pull my copy of nmap out of the clutches of my cold dead hand!
Actually it is Lama dumbass. Llama is a four legged mammal frequently used as a beast of burden . On the other hand Lama as in Dalai Lama is a spirtually enlighted person. Although to be frank, I'm neither a Lama nor a Llama:)
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They complain about apple's license but perhaps when push comes to shove the language apple uses will stand up better in court. The language doesn't seem to be trying to keep people from doing what they want with the code, but rather it is trying to guarantee that if somebody releases a modified product that it will remain open. The FSF may see the added verbage to be restrictive but perhaps the GPL's verbage wouldn't hold up in court as well.
The FSF wreaks of the arrogance that comes with the assumption that they are right. I appreciate what the FSF has done and I think that the spirit of the GPL is wonderful, but frankly until you are taking people to court and prooving the validity of the license, don't go criticizing the subtleties of other groups whose hearts appear to be in the right place.
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Yup, that's right, it does. Evolve or die.
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1) People who wanted a robust operating system would pay somebody else to build it
2) Other enlightened folks would decide to take the old Linux and continue innovating along a more practical course
3) Other enlightened folks would work on some other system (FreeOpenNetBSD, etc).
So, how can innovation be stifled? At worst, it is increasin people's expectations of what they should get for the money they spend. And ultimately that encoruages better products at lower prices which is increasing efficiency (and that's pretty innovative).
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It seems to me that this is a too little too late scenario. OpenSSH has been around for a long time and he hasn't taken issue with it until now. Now, it could be argues that OpenSSH has had time to build it's own name associated with a certain quality of product, etc. If they were forced to change their name, it might cause confusion for people who wanted to find their product.
Has he made his complaints earlier, OpenSSH would have been named something else, and today we'd all be using an SSH replacement called something else. Sucks to have to go to court over such things, but I think the OpenSSH group has a strong case at this point.
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What napster does isn't quite like you telling people where to buy drugs. With napster it is more like you own a giant flea market where everybody is selling drugs. You know it, the cops know it, and everybody who attends the event knows it (which is why they attend). The important point here is that Napster's network and software facillitate the trading.
To illustrate the difference, let's look at lycos' mp3 search. You can do the same sort of searching that can be done through napster, but lycos doesn't provide any facilities for connecting you with the other people. This may seem like a subtle difference, but it is important.
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1) The US government is certain that Bin Laden is a backer of terrorists (enough so to bomb sovereign countries).
2) The US government has enough evidence against 4 men to take them into court and prosecute them as terrorists.
Seems to me that they are getting by fine regardless of the encryption. I mean if the encryption was such an issue, how would we have any information about these people? Traditional intelligence gathering and detective work are not dead because of encryption.
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Now, with conventional weapons, you have a serious design problem. To fire a projectile you create a small explosion in the barrel. The larger the explosion, the faster the projectile, but at some point, the explosion is so large that you cannot design a barrel strong enough to contain it (or at least not one that you can tote around on the average tank).
With a rail gun, you have a big advantage in that the force applied to the projectile is applied over the entire length of the barrel. This reduces the stress on the barrel because you can apply the necessary force over a longer period of time. This allows you to achieve higher velocities with lighter barrels which provides two big benefits:
1) more destructive force
2) guns that can be rotated and aimed faster and more accurately
Now of course there are limitations with this too, but it does get you beyond the problems inate in more conventional explosives based ammo.
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1) the universe is a persistent and theoretically limitless space
2) rankings in the game are based on "fealty points". Each planet in the game is worth one fealty point if you control it. Each planet is worth two fealty points if somebody else controls it, but pledges their loyalty to you. So there's an incentive to not just go out and kill everybody.
I do intend for the game to have resource limitations, but as the game goes on and your technology develops, you become more efficient in your use of resources. Furthermore, the limitations on resources are planet by planet, so as the universe expands and players are added, more planets and more resources appear.
Another thing is that technology can be shared in the game, so it encourages players to collaborate with eachother. So, you can develop powerful weapons while another develops powerful armor and combined you can put together some pretty nasty ships.
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Being that the FCC is a government agency, deriving it's mandate from the citizens, what do you see as the FCC's role in preserving the rights of consumers to copy and time shift broadcasted materials? How do you envision the interaction between the media, the broadcasters, and the viewers in a future where analog is no longer an option?
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What will likely happen is that every bug that comes up will be seriously considered for political and economic fallout and they'll only allow the information that's relatively safe to them get out to this group. So, only the truely innocuous bugs will get dealt with and the big nasty ones will still be out there.
And you know where the nasty bugs will get discussed? Bugtraq!
I'd save my money if I was Cisco or Oracle or what have you. The only possible value in this is getting some dirty laundry on your competitors and that's only if their dumb enough to tell you in the first place (and if they are that dumb they'll be dead in a couple years anyhow).
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Another problem with the system is that there are three major credit reporting agencies. So, you may have a clean slate at one, but the other has red flags all over the place. So you might get your credit checked through one agency and discover everything is fine, but the same check through another agency could turn up problems. In theory the agencies share info but not always.
Personally I recommend that everybody make a point of getting a copy of their credit report on a routine basis. If there is a problem it is much better to see it early on rather than get an unpleasant surprise when you are trying to buy a house, a car, or an education. There's several services out there that offer credit monitoring services that will report problems and give you quarterly updates of your information.
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Now, if the State of Virginia has an automated porn sweeper and scoured the networks and drives for people breaking the rules and then immediately and automatically firing them, I'd be much more concerned. In reality though, this law will only be enforced on people who are doing things that they legitimately shouldn't be doing. Do you think a professor doing legitimate research on the history of prostitution is going to get busted? No!
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One of the features I most love about mozilla is that you can right click on an ad banner and block all images from the originating server. Thus I can go through and block the ads from annoying places like doubleclick, but leave ads if they don't actively annoy me. Of course since ad banners make the net go 'round, AOL can't very well have a netscape that provides the ability to block banners.
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If they have to whip out the lawyers and you lose they'll show absolutely no mercy in an effort to make an example out of you. Remember, copyright violations have criminal penalties associated with them, so they can try to put people in jail on top of taking far more money than you would have had to pay had you just let them walk in and audit you. So, no, they technically can't but if you have half a wit of business sense, you'll just let them for fear of the consequences.
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So then even if you have the same 50/50 split between *nixes and windows, I think you'll see Linux slow start to gnaw away at the propertiary unixes. Eventually as these OS's lose market share they'll divert their existing IP and research efforts into Linux (see also SGI). With each fallen Unix variant, more energy will be diverted into making Linux better.
So, if my theory holds up, not to far down the road will be down to four major enterprise OS's: Windows 2000, Linux, Monterrey, and Solaris. So then who's next? Monterrey. IBM has invested much in that product, but they've also invested heavily in Linux. Why waste resources on two development efforts when one is clearly growing and beginning to look like a dominant player. So, monterrey fades, and you are down to three.
Sun has been downplaying Linux on big systems, but as this all evolves, if Linux keeps moving full steam ahead, those arguments will cease to be plausible. Sun may resist eventually, but with the majority of Enterprise unix work running on Linux, it will be hard to argue the business case for backing Solaris any further.
So then it will be just Windows vs. Linux. I dunno, come back here in 10 years and see if I'm right
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In the case of Bush vs. McCain, Bush put together an ad where he was with some Vietnam vet and got the guy to say that McCain had ignored vets and let them down. McCain was livid. Not only did this break the agreement they had against mud slinging, but he is very sensitive on Veterans issues, and so it was a big blow below the belt.
So, McCain got angry and he went all out after Bush. Bush's camp of course accused McCain's of brining down the level of the campaign, and it turned into a giant mud slinging fest quickly. So, less independents showed up and Bush won it.
Oh, and if you believe Bush's rhetoric about being somebody who will improve the tone of washington politics, just look at how he operated in the Primary to see what a crock that is.
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The one point to be clear on here though is that the Indrema folks realize that games are the key. That's why open source tools is such a big part of their focus. They want to enable individuals and small open source efforts to release games just like the big boys. By lowering the barrier to entry for developers, they intend to have good games by shear force of the size of their developer group.
Now, contrast this to X-box and PS/2. Sony, has released a platform that all of the developers complain about as being too complex to get good performance out of. They decided to whip up a machine that was all bells and whistles but is too hard for developers to make use of. This will hurt them in the long run.
The X-box was targeted at making development easy, but AT A PRICE. Microsoft's business model relies on charging huge fees for their development tools. Granted these tools, if consistent with Microsoft's past work, will be good, but it will keep casual developers and smaller efforts from developing for that platform.
The gamble that Indrema is making is that if they can make developing on the platform open to as many people as possible, they can get more games and more interesting games that wouldn't normally find their way to the traditional platform. This is definitely a gamble, but I think they have a shot, and this is certainly no CD-I
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Now, having expressed that concern, I do realize one comforting thing. Let's say it goes on sale, and only the uber-geeks buy it. Fine, if it is open source, even if Indrema goes bankrupt, somebody's going to be out there writing games, and hacking the damn things. I mean even if Indrema went out of business I'm sure that the few they do sell will thrive.
But enough of my doom and gloom. Good luck to you Indrema. With the right combination of good technology, forward thinking, cash, and a lot of luck, maybe you can pull this off!
Oh and say, what "Major Title" will be coming with it?
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Well, invariably, a few of the kids are going to try marijuana. They'll try it, probably like it, and find that they aren't addicted too it. So, they think that maybe the cops are full of it. So, then they try some other things, and soon enough they tread on to the ground of something that is dangerous and addictive.
What kids need is real honest information about the effects of the drugs. They should distinguish between drug use (the occasional drink with friends or a glass of wine with dinner) and drug abuse (binge drinking and full blown alcoholism).
Now, to the credit of these organizations like DARE, they are a branch of a government that has chose to enforce a completely irrational drug policy. They can't go into schools and tell kids the truth and that using drugs isn't wrong but that abusing drugs is. If they did that, the politicians would look like fools and liars, and we can't have that. So what they do tell them is what they have to tell them to keep them out of jail.
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Imagine for a moment if documents leaked out from @Home were published in the New York Times. Now, if @home wanted to go after them, they'd have to file a lawsuit and go through numerous hurdles. Even if their suit was successful, the paper was printed, the impact was made. The printing can't be undone and it may be argued that is shouldn't be undone. The legal consequence is paid by the paper for this but what is done is done.
In this case though, @home just has to have a lawyer type up a letter and e-mail it to a few places to have this shut down. There's no judicial order, or oversight of any kind. The yanking of the document was purely based on the whims of the corporation. Unless the ISP feels some moral obligation they aren't going to fight it. And frankly moral obligations don't boost sagging stock prices.
Personally I think that if @home feels they have been so wronged by this, they should go after the guy who did it in court. What he did may or may not be wrong and in doing so he should be aware that he is opening himself up to legal risk. So let that play out. Take it to court and see what the court says. We are giving away the right of judicial review to a bunch of lawyers and word processors. That's a VERY dangerous precedent.
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This is such a patently bad idea. Okay, so we eliminate all public hacking discourse and we prevent law abiding citizens from being able to use and develop hacking tools. The results would be the following:
1) criminal hackers will use encryption and numerous other methodologies to conceal their trade in and development of hacking tools.
2) corporate security managers will be unable to test the security of their own systems.
3) home computer users will be unable to test the security of their own systems.
4) bugs found in common systems will be left unannounced and will be openly exploited by the people mention in point #1 above
I mean can there possibly be a greater recipe for disaster on the Internet? *sigh* You can pull my copy of nmap out of the clutches of my cold dead hand!
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