I don't understand - So if I create great software to manage an HVAC system to great efficiency I have to give it away, but if I make Angry Birds I don't? What's the difference?
Not quite. You can sell whatever you like, but we don't have to buy it.
Given the choice of your highly efficient non-free HVAC software, and somewhat less efficient free-as-in-speech HVAC software, many of us would prefer to use the free-as-in-speech one. At least we can understand and improve that one.
Whereas, I have no qualms about buying a non-free Angry Birds; I have no intention of every improving it, nor do I anticipate some other hacker doing so.
You've also made the classic false conflation of 'give away' and 'free software'. You can sell free software, and many companies do so.
For the last 20 years I've been an advocate of free software, but I've also merrily made an exception for gaming systems -- buying a series of consoles and handhelds which are as closed as platforms can be. I wasn't *quite* able to explain why this was OK.
RMS helps:
As for works of opinion and art, I don't think they must be free. I advocate some reforms of copyright for these works but I see no reason to abolish it.
Word processors, printer drivers, operating systems, central heating controllers, sequencers, web servers, should be free - games, music compositions, etc. - not so much.
The demo I saw was Ubuntu and Android running in tandem on the same Galaxy S3. I'm not sure whether Ubuntu was in Android user space, vice versa, or whether both are under some supervisor. But the handset was showing the Android UI while Ubuntu Desktop was on a HDMI monitor, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
It all seems rather nice. The two OSs can communicate, for example you could interact with the Android contacts database from an app in Ubuntu.
The original Elite is a trading game in which you run goods between planets. Buy low, sell high. The journey between planets involves realtime 3D space flight and, potentially, realtime space combat. Going to planets with unstable governments, dealing in illegal goods, bounty hunting, are all ways to make more money, while attracting more badass enemies.
Ostensibly the aim of the game is to achieve 'Elite' ranking, which involves shooting lots of enemy ships -- and looking for fights is necessary if you want to do that. But, you could if you wanted, shuttle back and forth between peaceful planets making money.
The disk version included missions.
Elite: Dangerous, of course, adds loads of intricacies. Braben says things like: there's abandoned wrecks floating around in space ripe to be scavenged for cargo. Of course they might not be as abandoned as they appear... Or you might take payment to carry a valuable cargo - but you can't hope to get through without an escort, so you'll pay some other players for their services.
I never played the original Elite, and I'm really curious as to how the procedurally generated stuff mixes with the ability of players to affect the game universe.
I did play it, a lot. My guess is that the procedural generation produced the starting state, and it stored a delta. The only thing you could affect was your own status (criminal/clean, and number of kills, your cargo and your armoury) and market prices on the planets where you traded. It definitely felt as if you could skew a market by buying or selling in quantity, repeatedly.
Everything else is happens dynamically based on that. If you're a criminal, you'll get cops and bounty hunters coming for you. If you go to lawless planets with a valuable cargo, you'll get pirates, and so on.
Elite: Dangerous will be a lot more sophisticated, of course.
He didn't publish it himself. Acornsoft licensed the original BBC Micro version, and after that was successful, Firebird picked up the ports to other platforms.
The procedural map generation is a cool hack to get over the lack of memory, but far from the most technically difficult thing they did. It'd make a somewhat interesting homework project for a beginner programmer -- write a small, fast PRNG and massage the output into pronounceable planet names and attributes.
The 3D wireframe graphics were the more impressive aspect - with a more impressive framerate than many 2D games.
I think the absence of hardware sprite rendering on the BBC might be part of the reason for this. On the C64, for example, sprite based games were the natural option because the hardware lent itself to it.
£1.3M is what they've got in Kickstarter pledges. I'm sure that won't be their only source of investment.
Now they can go to a publisher, an angel investor, or a business bank and say '22,500 people were excited enough to back us on Kickstarter, to the tune of almost £60/head on average . Give us an advance and you can be our publisher. Invest some money and you can be a shareholder. Lend us some money and you can have some confidence we'll be good for it."
Sure, OK, Turing Complete probably isn't sufficient. But Turing complete, fast, and backed up with a full-featured system library is sufficient.
A good Javascript implementation, with HTML5 for display, user input and storage, is good enough for serious apps, not just toys.
If you don't like writing Javascript, use one of the many languages that compile to Javascript. If you don't like the DOM, abstract it into an API you do like.
This would make a perfectly reasonable news item; there's no need to solicit Slashdotters' opinions. People comment anyway.
99% of comments will be ill-informed. You won't be able to identify the 1% which are well informed, unless you're already knowledgeable on the subject. So why bother?
"Ordinary users" == people who use nothing but a browser?
Doubtful. I tried to sell my Dad the idea of an iPad/Nexus/whatever or a Chromebook (because I don't know enough about Windows to support him). He came up with a list of Windows apps he wants to use. Nothing that couldn't be done in a browser in theory, but stuff he's been using since Win95.
I'm guessing that your mom cooks your food here, because cooking works great in cups spoons and other random measurements and is a right pain in the arse in grams ml and mm. The consumer is always right and you are not a cook.
I'm confused because you measure in 'cups', you call your mum 'mom', but you say 'arse' not 'ass.
British recipes don't use cups. British people encountering 'cup' for the first time in American recipes, tend to screw up, because they'll puzzle for a while, then shrug and use a teacup, which is unlikely to be 236ml in volume.
A teaspoon is 5ml, a tablespoon is 15ml. These are metric measures.
If I'm following a recipe, the easiest way is with an add-and-weigh scale, where you tap the 'tare' button after every ingredient. If you assume liquids have the density of water (1 litre = 1 kg) you'll not go far wrong, and it saves getting measuring jugs dirty.
75 grammes is nowhere as easy to comprehend as 3oz
That's purely a matter of what you're familiar with. Having always cooked in metric, I have no feeling for what 3oz is. I know what 100g feels like, and I'd use that knowledge to estimate 75g.
Plus with imperial measurement, there's the wacky conversions you have to make when subdividing. Cut your 1lb loaf of bread in half. What does it weigh? 8 oz. You probably know there's 16 oz to the lb. I had to look it up.
What's half of 1kg in the appropriate smaller unit? 500g. Easy. Nobody has to look anything up, because it's always a power of 10, and it's in the names.
How many home purchases are made with bitcoin? Are you saying half?
Worldwide, of course, nowhere near half of house purchases are made with dollars either. There are lots of currencies.
I'm not saying Bitcoin is a success. I'm not saying it's going to be a success.
But in order to be a success, it doesn't need to replace dollars. It doesn't need to even be ubiquitous. It just needs to carve out a stable enough niche to perpetuate.
I was mining bitcoins with two AMD Radeon 9790 cards and was barely turning a profit.
This is how it should be. Market forces are expected to push the market value of bitcoins to a point where mining is only profitable if you find ways to do it very efficiently.
But, normal homemade bread with just water, salt, wholewheat flour and sourdough starter will stay fresh for a week or so.
Long rising periods are key. The yeast "farms" itself a probiotic environment which just happens to improve the keeping qualities of bread, and improve the digestibility of wheat.
Shopping local - which doesn't mean shopping at Wal-Mart - isn't something (smart) poor people can really afford to do any more.
At least in the UK, there's another class of people who can't afford *not* to shop locally. If you don't have a car, bulk supermarket shopping becomes impractical (yes there's buses, taxis, but they're hassle) and instead people use their local corner shops -- which are more expensive, but more convenient and not as expensive as owning a car.
When a supermarket out-competes small local shops and they close, it has a devastating effect on those who relied on the corner shops. Think little old ladies who can't walk round the corner to buy a basket of vegetables any more, and have to schlep to the supermarket on a bus.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't understand - So if I create great software to manage an HVAC system to great efficiency I have to give it away, but if I make Angry Birds I don't? What's the difference?
Not quite. You can sell whatever you like, but we don't have to buy it.
Given the choice of your highly efficient non-free HVAC software, and somewhat less efficient free-as-in-speech HVAC software, many of us would prefer to use the free-as-in-speech one. At least we can understand and improve that one.
Whereas, I have no qualms about buying a non-free Angry Birds; I have no intention of every improving it, nor do I anticipate some other hacker doing so.
You've also made the classic false conflation of 'give away' and 'free software'. You can sell free software, and many companies do so.
For the last 20 years I've been an advocate of free software, but I've also merrily made an exception for gaming systems -- buying a series of consoles and handhelds which are as closed as platforms can be. I wasn't *quite* able to explain why this was OK.
RMS helps:
As for works of opinion and art, I don't think they must be free. I advocate some reforms of copyright for these works but I see no reason to abolish it.
Word processors, printer drivers, operating systems, central heating controllers, sequencers, web servers, should be free - games, music compositions, etc. - not so much.
I'll remember that next time I install a closed-source web server.
Oh, wait. I'm never going to install a closed-source web server.
Dual boot?
The demo I saw was Ubuntu and Android running in tandem on the same Galaxy S3. I'm not sure whether Ubuntu was in Android user space, vice versa, or whether both are under some supervisor. But the handset was showing the Android UI while Ubuntu Desktop was on a HDMI monitor, Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
It all seems rather nice. The two OSs can communicate, for example you could interact with the Android contacts database from an app in Ubuntu.
I've seen videos of "people playing Elite again".
Admittedly it's pre-alpha code, and the "people" were developers. But nonetheless, it was a group of blokes engaging in a cool looking space battle.
The original Elite is a trading game in which you run goods between planets. Buy low, sell high. The journey between planets involves realtime 3D space flight and, potentially, realtime space combat. Going to planets with unstable governments, dealing in illegal goods, bounty hunting, are all ways to make more money, while attracting more badass enemies.
Ostensibly the aim of the game is to achieve 'Elite' ranking, which involves shooting lots of enemy ships -- and looking for fights is necessary if you want to do that. But, you could if you wanted, shuttle back and forth between peaceful planets making money.
The disk version included missions.
Elite: Dangerous, of course, adds loads of intricacies. Braben says things like: there's abandoned wrecks floating around in space ripe to be scavenged for cargo. Of course they might not be as abandoned as they appear... Or you might take payment to carry a valuable cargo - but you can't hope to get through without an escort, so you'll pay some other players for their services.
I never played the original Elite, and I'm really curious as to how the procedurally generated stuff mixes with the ability of players to affect the game universe.
I did play it, a lot. My guess is that the procedural generation produced the starting state, and it stored a delta. The only thing you could affect was your own status (criminal/clean, and number of kills, your cargo and your armoury) and market prices on the planets where you traded. It definitely felt as if you could skew a market by buying or selling in quantity, repeatedly.
Everything else is happens dynamically based on that. If you're a criminal, you'll get cops and bounty hunters coming for you. If you go to lawless planets with a valuable cargo, you'll get pirates, and so on.
Elite: Dangerous will be a lot more sophisticated, of course.
He didn't publish it himself. Acornsoft licensed the original BBC Micro version, and after that was successful, Firebird picked up the ports to other platforms.
The procedural map generation is a cool hack to get over the lack of memory, but far from the most technically difficult thing they did. It'd make a somewhat interesting homework project for a beginner programmer -- write a small, fast PRNG and massage the output into pronounceable planet names and attributes.
The 3D wireframe graphics were the more impressive aspect - with a more impressive framerate than many 2D games.
I think the absence of hardware sprite rendering on the BBC might be part of the reason for this. On the C64, for example, sprite based games were the natural option because the hardware lent itself to it.
£1.3M is what they've got in Kickstarter pledges. I'm sure that won't be their only source of investment.
Now they can go to a publisher, an angel investor, or a business bank and say '22,500 people were excited enough to back us on Kickstarter, to the tune of almost £60/head on average . Give us an advance and you can be our publisher. Invest some money and you can be a shareholder. Lend us some money and you can have some confidence we'll be good for it."
Sure, OK, Turing Complete probably isn't sufficient. But Turing complete, fast, and backed up with a full-featured system library is sufficient.
A good Javascript implementation, with HTML5 for display, user input and storage, is good enough for serious apps, not just toys.
If you don't like writing Javascript, use one of the many languages that compile to Javascript. If you don't like the DOM, abstract it into an API you do like.
This would make a perfectly reasonable news item; there's no need to solicit Slashdotters' opinions. People comment anyway.
99% of comments will be ill-informed. You won't be able to identify the 1% which are well informed, unless you're already knowledgeable on the subject. So why bother?
But ultimately you could say that closed source is the most free, as it frees you to distribute your programs as binaries if you want to.
Public Domain is the most free, by that definition. Then licences like BSD and Apache.
But they make it possible to make a non-free derived work, which many authors of free software find undesirable.
"Ordinary users" == people who use nothing but a browser?
Doubtful. I tried to sell my Dad the idea of an iPad/Nexus/whatever or a Chromebook (because I don't know enough about Windows to support him). He came up with a list of Windows apps he wants to use. Nothing that couldn't be done in a browser in theory, but stuff he's been using since Win95.
I think that's going to be fairly typical.
I'm guessing that your mom cooks your food here, because cooking works great in cups spoons and other random measurements and is a right pain in the arse in grams ml and mm. The consumer is always right and you are not a cook.
I'm confused because you measure in 'cups', you call your mum 'mom', but you say 'arse' not 'ass.
British recipes don't use cups. British people encountering 'cup' for the first time in American recipes, tend to screw up, because they'll puzzle for a while, then shrug and use a teacup, which is unlikely to be 236ml in volume.
A teaspoon is 5ml, a tablespoon is 15ml. These are metric measures.
If I'm following a recipe, the easiest way is with an add-and-weigh scale, where you tap the 'tare' button after every ingredient. If you assume liquids have the density of water (1 litre = 1 kg) you'll not go far wrong, and it saves getting measuring jugs dirty.
75 grammes is nowhere as easy to comprehend as 3oz
That's purely a matter of what you're familiar with. Having always cooked in metric, I have no feeling for what 3oz is. I know what 100g feels like, and I'd use that knowledge to estimate 75g.
Plus with imperial measurement, there's the wacky conversions you have to make when subdividing. Cut your 1lb loaf of bread in half. What does it weigh? 8 oz. You probably know there's 16 oz to the lb. I had to look it up.
What's half of 1kg in the appropriate smaller unit? 500g. Easy. Nobody has to look anything up, because it's always a power of 10, and it's in the names.
What are your failure criteria?
Actually, what are your success criteria?
Surely BitCoin isn't dead until the market value of a BitCoin is zero?
I'm not sure what you mean by "intrinsic" here, so I'm going to ignore that word.
If you think bitcoins have no value, go ahead and try to obtain one for free.
If you succeed, you can sell it at 100% profit to one of those suckers who believes its current market price is a little over $13.
How many home purchases are made with bitcoin? Are you saying half?
Worldwide, of course, nowhere near half of house purchases are made with dollars either. There are lots of currencies.
I'm not saying Bitcoin is a success. I'm not saying it's going to be a success.
But in order to be a success, it doesn't need to replace dollars. It doesn't need to even be ubiquitous. It just needs to carve out a stable enough niche to perpetuate.
I was mining bitcoins with two AMD Radeon 9790 cards and was barely turning a profit.
This is how it should be. Market forces are expected to push the market value of bitcoins to a point where mining is only profitable if you find ways to do it very efficiently.
More restaurant than food stand, and more Mediterranean than Mexican, but will the Mezze Grill in NYC do?
http://starburst.hackerfriendly.com/?p=1530
Don't be offended, but if something goes wrong in my breadmaking process and it doesn't rise properly, I refer to it as "German bread".
Rye flour isn't normal. It barely has any gluten!
But, normal homemade bread with just water, salt, wholewheat flour and sourdough starter will stay fresh for a week or so.
Long rising periods are key. The yeast "farms" itself a probiotic environment which just happens to improve the keeping qualities of bread, and improve the digestibility of wheat.
The point is who will buy from IBM's customers? 17K is good enough, only if living conditions are sub par.
Everyone buys food. Food retailers use IBM POS systems, IBM payroll systems, IBM stock control...
The I always stood for "international".
When I worked for IBM UK, I collaborated with colleagues in the USA, Canada, Japan, India, mainland Europe...
Shopping local - which doesn't mean shopping at Wal-Mart - isn't something (smart) poor people can really afford to do any more.
At least in the UK, there's another class of people who can't afford *not* to shop locally. If you don't have a car, bulk supermarket shopping becomes impractical (yes there's buses, taxis, but they're hassle) and instead people use their local corner shops -- which are more expensive, but more convenient and not as expensive as owning a car.
When a supermarket out-competes small local shops and they close, it has a devastating effect on those who relied on the corner shops. Think little old ladies who can't walk round the corner to buy a basket of vegetables any more, and have to schlep to the supermarket on a bus.