I don't think the snooty critics would agree with that. Fun is optional, and engaging is not enough.
If the "point" of a movie is merely to engage, then Die Hard is equivalent to Koyaanisqatsi. If the point of a book is merely to engage, then Harry Potter is equivalent to The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Die Hard is a great film; so is Koyaanisqatsi. But they are very different, and it's useful to have a word that helps us distinguish between them. "Art", however vague a term it is, is the best one we have.
Does the gaming equivalent of the "art movie" exist? I reckon Braid qualifies. The Path qualifies.
Enough people for there to be a reasonably mature and well sourced http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classificatory_disputes_about_art">Wikipedia entry on the subject.... and, seemingly the readers of every knee-jerk British tabloid cares, every time the winner of Turner Prize is announced.
The difficulty of the job feeds directly into the level of supply. The more difficult it is, the fewer people will be willing to do it, and the more they'll charge.
OK, so it was a slightly fuzzy choice of word -- but not that bad, unless we're stumbling on some regional language issues? Call it the product of how long it'll take, multiplied by the expertise of the people doing it. Both of which are also difficult to measure, but an appropriate price will fall out of the market anyway.
More for other readers than for you, here's what TFA has to say about peer discovery.
Initially we will extend sipwitch to become aware of peer nodes by supporting host caches, and then support publishing of routes to connected peers. This work builds upon the already existing routing foundation in sipwitch itself. The use of host caches is a mechanism used in older p2p networks, it is generally well understood, it would meet the initial goals of establishing a self organized mesh network, and it is rather easy to initially implement to fully demonstrate the potential of sipwitch as a mesh calling system. More advanced methodologies can then be added later on.
If I spend months and months slaving over hot butterfly brains, no one can tell me what to do with the fruits of my labor.
I don't think he's telling you not to distribute your work as proprietary binaries. Rather, he's suggesting to me that I would be a fool to use those binaries.
Once the police had reasonable grounds to obtain a warrant, they were able to obtain records from a suspect's cellphone records. This did not include recordings of his conversations -- but it did include the time and duration of calls made and received, and fairly accurate location information gleaned from his proximity to the transmitters.... and all of this was admissible evidence in court.
Last week we saw some stuff about Android trojans. The right flaw in Android, and a trojan could make your GPS switch/indicators dummies, and intermittently phone home with your location, quite easily. Or, make it record from the mic, at high gain, and upload the files to base when it's convenient. A black-hat could get that onto your phone, or a government, or a corporation with some part in the development and distribution of the phone and its software (In my case, Google, HTC and Three have all got their mitts on the Android distro at some point in the chain).
Yeah, you have to be a bit of a swivel eyed conspiracy theorist to pin it on governments or phone companies. Over here in Britain, the News of the World phone hacking scandal is topical -- a PI gained access to various public figures' voicemail boxes. So here's a scenario: a hacker under the employ of a newspaper gains physical access to your phone for half an hour or so, roots it, installs location and eavesdropping software, leaves it looking as if it's not been tampered with. I think that's plausible.
He's suggesting that there might be some synergy between RMS talking about how cellphones provide a way for The Man to track you, and a GNU project popping it that aims to route voice communications through a P2P mesh with privacy features.
Maybe I'm out of date, but the problem used to be that you couldn't do peer-to-peer without a third-party (e.g. Skype) at a known address.
I'm not sure what you mean by peer-to-peer, but if your friend knows your IP address, and your home router is forwarding connections to some port (UPnP will do this automagically), and your host is listening, then they can open a socket to you, and that's p2p as far as I'm concerned.
If your IP address isn't static, then you have the difficulty of communicating your current address to them. I guess most of the various ways you could do that -- dynamic DNS, emailing it to them, some sort of centralised hub used to negotiate the connection (Skype, a BT tracker,...), etc. -- would count as a third-party.
It seems as if their vision is that the "third party" be a self-organising mesh of servers. I don't know who'd run them, but then I'm not sure who runs Bittorrent trackers either:)
It looks like what they're doing is using SIP Witch as a basis. As far as I can tell, SIP Witch just connects endpoints to each other, allowing those endpoints to negotiate a protocol for what they're streaming to each other independently. I think the new thing here is that it'll be able to route through a P2P/mesh type arrangement, for privacy and independence from a single central service provider -- but everything else is existing code.... and SIP Witch has the GUI separated from the daemon, as any sane architect would.
That's what I gleaned from TFA and its comments. I could have misunderstood large parts of it. Feel free to correct me.
I would say that it's less about programming, and more about game design. A bazaar software development method can assemble a reasonable game engine -- but that's only a tiny fraction of what makes a game -- and many kinds of game, like novels or movies, require an overall vision, a director or an author.
Then, that author can't really make use of what they've created, because they already know it inside out. Whereas if you write EMACS, you can use EMACS for the rest of your life, if you write Silent Hill, you're unlikely to play Silent Hill for fun -- so that "scratching your own itch" thing doesn't happen with games.
I know that's not the case with all game styles -- e.g. something like Quake 3 Arena. Then again, as the developer, you probably wouldn't mind playing Q3A with placeholders for characters and scenery, because from a technical and gameplay perspective, everything's there. Yeah, you'd get user-generated content once you were up and running -- but you need compelling content to draw those users in in the first place.
Also, for many kinds of games, OSS's strength -- that you can modify it -- is not such a win. You don't want to look at the source for Monkey Island, because it will contain spoilers (I do know someone who solved Zork by writing a Z-code decompiler). I don't really see why you'd want to modify Monkey Island once you'd played it. There is a healthy scene of free interactive fiction created by hobbyists -- but again, because they are "auteur" pieces, they are usually one-person projects and the source isn't shipped presumably because it would be a source of spoilers.
I don't particularly mind, because I don't think games are "important" enough that their being proprietary is a problem. (Can't find a better word than "important"; I don't wish to denigrate games or gaming. I happily pay money for proprietary console games. I feel like a sellout when I work with other proprietary programs.)
Well, that's true, but you can't deny that working with a decompiled binary takes more expertise than working with commented source code.
More importantly, you're talking about working contrary to the wishes of whoever provided the binary. They've not supplied source code because they don't *want* you to modify it. It may or may not be legal wherever in the world you are -- but regardless, you've chosen to use software which the creator wants you to not modify. You can fight them, and you can get it done. You might even avoid getting into an arms race, where they try to obfuscate the logic.
But isn't it easier, and more satisfactory, from an engineering perspective, to be working with the grain? In an environment where you can discuss the best way of implementing your feature with the community? Where you can merge it into the main project, and others will benefit -- and you may benefit from suggestions or even code provided by other users?
Not the point. The point is that they should, and Stallman is trying to make that happen.
I'll bite. Why should I care? Give me the elevator pitch. Try not to use any lies or paranoid delusions.
Stallman began his computing career in an environment where if something irked you about the way a system worked, you'd fix it. Even though he was working on the proprietary DEC UNIX (I think), customers got the source code, and it was fairly routine to fiddle with it to make it more like how you wanted it, and where appropriate, send a patch back to DEC in case they wanted to merge it into their core distribution. Of course it was early days, and source code control was a bit haphazard, and nobody really thought too hard about the ownership of the code, since the money was in the hardware. That's why if you look for a diagram of UNIX/BSD's heritage, it's so complex.
So one day, Stallman gets fed up of going to the print room only to find that his job's not printed yet because it's stuck behind someone else's. And he thinks, I know, I'll do a quick mod to the print queue code so that it emails the user when it's printed. So he asks for the source code, and he's told, no, he can't have it. This is a completely new paradigm for him -- he had not until then considered that anyone might deny him the ability to improve the software he's using.
And he thinks, how can this be a positive thing for anybody? This is preventing the software from improving, for no reason. He can see how the software might be better, he knows how to achieve that, yet somebody is actively denying him from doing that.
And that's still the question today. How can it be a good thing, that you are not *allowed* to improve the software you supposedly "own"? Even if you can't program, how can it be a good thing that you're not allowed to ask your programmer buddy, or programmer employee, to improve it to your specifications?
And that's why you might care. You don't have to .
Many of us have got accustomed to using software under these restrictions; we might decide there are factors that mitigate the restrictions (e.g. we might argue that the software would not have been written in the first place, if it were not going to be distributed under a restrictive licence). Stallman cut his teeth on software that didn't have those restrictions, and it upsets him sufficiently that he never uses non-free software where a free alternative exists - creating free alternatives wherever he can.
BTW, does anybody have know when the last time his name was on the "commit" of any open source project?
I don't -- but since he wrote huge chunks of GCC, bash and all the standard UNIX command clones used in Linux, Cygwin etc. I daresay you execute some of his code hundreds or thousands of times a day.
He cannot be accused of not practising what he preaches.
Come on, he ain't bad. I mean if you had to choose between him an Knuth to be your CS conference keynote speaker, you'd pick Knuth -- but you'd happily settle on Lamport if Knuth wasn't available.
As I've pointed out in another thread, the traditional analogy is the buggy-whip manufacturer.
Although free software won't destroy software development as a profession (because as long a software needs to be developed, someone will pay for it to be done) -- even if it did, why should we care.
Let's say I design lace wraps for coffee cups. Should I stamp my foot in outrage at anyone who suggests these are a waste of time -- because I have a family to feed and the world owes it to me to preserve my profession of lace coffee cup wraps?
(A pathetic lapse in imagination, that particular surreal and useless invented product, but that point still works)
I'm not sure I understand what's happened here. It certainly looks like a computer animation!
Is each frame a separate photo? Just cropped to line up with the previous one, cleaned up and colour-treated to match? Or is there a lot more artifice going on?
U-huh, and if you're willing to spend enough, you can commission a complete bespoke app.
But that's quite different from paying someone a couple of day's consultancy rates to customise qmail or whatever to your needs.
Or, what I assume you were talking about, buying off-the-shelf software -- you have very little influence as to what that software is like. If you have a requirement that's not shared by thousands of other people, you won't get it.
FWIW, RMS's road-to-Damascus moment was when he decided it would be neat if their printer driver would email the user, once their print job had completed. He was used to being able to get the source for this kind of thing, and make changes to it. He was astonished and disappointed when DEC (I think) told him they wouldn't let him have the source.
This is the problem with Stallman as an advocate. He's got no shades of gray. Fanatics make terrible representatives for a cause, because in a world with billions of people, the chance to get even part of what you want, without some sorts of compromise, is non-existent.
I think hardliners (to pick a word without the connotations of "fanatic" or "extremist") are quite useful in achieving a compromise.
I spent my youth disagreeing with hard-line Welsh nationalists, but I've come to realise that without their extreme demands (which they have not achieved), the Welsh language would have been killed by London-led government policy. I think the moderate situation we have now is about right, but it wouldn't have come about without the hardliners demanding something stronger.
Likewise, I'm glad of hard-line anti-war campaigners. I know there are situations on the global stage where the last resort of armed conflict becomes appropriate -- but I want peaceful resolution to be pursued wherever possible, so I'm grateful that there's a lobby demanding there be no war under any circumstances.
If the source is open, I can ask any programmer to modify it for me, in an arrangement that only involves me, the programmer, and some cash (or, as we said, some other incentive; friendship, sexual favours, challenges to geek pride, reciprocal work). There's an open market, so I should be able to find someone who'll do it for a price that reflects the difficulty of the job. Even if I am capable of programming it myself, I might be able to find someone who's inclined to do it for me at a price that suits me better than putting in the time myself. In fact, that happens all the time -- someone pipes up on a mailing list that a feature would be nice, and an enthusiast implements it for fun the next day.
If the source is closed, I can only ask whoever holds the source, and they can quote me a price. If I don't like the price, I'm out of luck. The levers you've suggested -- passing laws, voting with wallets, etc. require a mass of people who want the same feature as I do, and that might not be the case.
Slashdot Mirror
Didn't some University have an English class that studied the game BioShock in place of a text?
The first page of Google results says "no", but if you can find a source I'd love to see it.
Bioshock has some beautiful production design and graphic direction. But it's a glossy piece of pulp fiction.
If Bioshock, as a whole, is art, then HP Lovecraft is high literature (and I don't think even the keenest Lovecraft fan would claim that).
I don't think the snooty critics would agree with that. Fun is optional, and engaging is not enough.
If the "point" of a movie is merely to engage, then Die Hard is equivalent to Koyaanisqatsi. If the point of a book is merely to engage, then Harry Potter is equivalent to The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Die Hard is a great film; so is Koyaanisqatsi. But they are very different, and it's useful to have a word that helps us distinguish between them. "Art", however vague a term it is, is the best one we have.
Does the gaming equivalent of the "art movie" exist? I reckon Braid qualifies. The Path qualifies.
Plus who cares what is or isn't art, anyway?
Enough people for there to be a reasonably mature and well sourced http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classificatory_disputes_about_art">Wikipedia entry on the subject. ... and, seemingly the readers of every knee-jerk British tabloid cares, every time the winner of Turner Prize is announced.
The difficulty of the job feeds directly into the level of supply. The more difficult it is, the fewer people will be willing to do it, and the more they'll charge.
OK, so it was a slightly fuzzy choice of word -- but not that bad, unless we're stumbling on some regional language issues? Call it the product of how long it'll take, multiplied by the expertise of the people doing it. Both of which are also difficult to measure, but an appropriate price will fall out of the market anyway.
Well, there ya go.
More for other readers than for you, here's what TFA has to say about peer discovery.
Initially we will extend sipwitch to become aware of peer nodes by supporting host caches, and then support publishing of routes to connected peers. This work builds upon the already existing routing foundation in sipwitch itself. The use of host caches is a mechanism used in older p2p networks, it is generally well understood, it would meet the initial goals of establishing a self organized mesh network, and it is rather easy to initially implement to fully demonstrate the potential of sipwitch as a mesh calling system. More advanced methodologies can then be added later on.
I wonder how many people have already said it in responses to this article?
You are absolutely encouraged to charge people money for the act of writing free software.
But at the same time -- the world doesn't revolve around making the thing you happen to be good at profitable.
If I spend months and months slaving over hot butterfly brains, no one can tell me what to do with the fruits of my labor.
I don't think he's telling you not to distribute your work as proprietary binaries. Rather, he's suggesting to me that I would be a fool to use those binaries.
If you're running any non-free software at all, how do you know it's not a trojan?
RMS's machine -- free software from the BIOS up -- is more "his" than yours is "yours". That's the point.
Yeah, I don't worry about it as much as he does either -- but you can see that it's at least a plausible risk.
I did jury service recently.
Once the police had reasonable grounds to obtain a warrant, they were able to obtain records from a suspect's cellphone records. This did not include recordings of his conversations -- but it did include the time and duration of calls made and received, and fairly accurate location information gleaned from his proximity to the transmitters. ... and all of this was admissible evidence in court.
Last week we saw some stuff about Android trojans. The right flaw in Android, and a trojan could make your GPS switch/indicators dummies, and intermittently phone home with your location, quite easily. Or, make it record from the mic, at high gain, and upload the files to base when it's convenient. A black-hat could get that onto your phone, or a government, or a corporation with some part in the development and distribution of the phone and its software (In my case, Google, HTC and Three have all got their mitts on the Android distro at some point in the chain).
Yeah, you have to be a bit of a swivel eyed conspiracy theorist to pin it on governments or phone companies. Over here in Britain, the News of the World phone hacking scandal is topical -- a PI gained access to various public figures' voicemail boxes. So here's a scenario: a hacker under the employ of a newspaper gains physical access to your phone for half an hour or so, roots it, installs location and eavesdropping software, leaves it looking as if it's not been tampered with. I think that's plausible.
He's suggesting that there might be some synergy between RMS talking about how cellphones provide a way for The Man to track you, and a GNU project popping it that aims to route voice communications through a P2P mesh with privacy features.
Ya reckon?
Maybe I'm out of date, but the problem used to be that you couldn't do peer-to-peer without a third-party (e.g. Skype) at a known address.
I'm not sure what you mean by peer-to-peer, but if your friend knows your IP address, and your home router is forwarding connections to some port (UPnP will do this automagically), and your host is listening, then they can open a socket to you, and that's p2p as far as I'm concerned.
If your IP address isn't static, then you have the difficulty of communicating your current address to them. I guess most of the various ways you could do that -- dynamic DNS, emailing it to them, some sort of centralised hub used to negotiate the connection (Skype, a BT tracker, ...), etc. -- would count as a third-party.
It seems as if their vision is that the "third party" be a self-organising mesh of servers. I don't know who'd run them, but then I'm not sure who runs Bittorrent trackers either :)
It looks like what they're doing is using SIP Witch as a basis. As far as I can tell, SIP Witch just connects endpoints to each other, allowing those endpoints to negotiate a protocol for what they're streaming to each other independently. I think the new thing here is that it'll be able to route through a P2P/mesh type arrangement, for privacy and independence from a single central service provider -- but everything else is existing code. ... and SIP Witch has the GUI separated from the daemon, as any sane architect would.
That's what I gleaned from TFA and its comments. I could have misunderstood large parts of it. Feel free to correct me.
I would say that it's less about programming, and more about game design. A bazaar software development method can assemble a reasonable game engine -- but that's only a tiny fraction of what makes a game -- and many kinds of game, like novels or movies, require an overall vision, a director or an author.
Then, that author can't really make use of what they've created, because they already know it inside out. Whereas if you write EMACS, you can use EMACS for the rest of your life, if you write Silent Hill, you're unlikely to play Silent Hill for fun -- so that "scratching your own itch" thing doesn't happen with games.
I know that's not the case with all game styles -- e.g. something like Quake 3 Arena. Then again, as the developer, you probably wouldn't mind playing Q3A with placeholders for characters and scenery, because from a technical and gameplay perspective, everything's there. Yeah, you'd get user-generated content once you were up and running -- but you need compelling content to draw those users in in the first place.
Also, for many kinds of games, OSS's strength -- that you can modify it -- is not such a win. You don't want to look at the source for Monkey Island, because it will contain spoilers (I do know someone who solved Zork by writing a Z-code decompiler). I don't really see why you'd want to modify Monkey Island once you'd played it. There is a healthy scene of free interactive fiction created by hobbyists -- but again, because they are "auteur" pieces, they are usually one-person projects and the source isn't shipped presumably because it would be a source of spoilers.
I don't particularly mind, because I don't think games are "important" enough that their being proprietary is a problem. (Can't find a better word than "important"; I don't wish to denigrate games or gaming. I happily pay money for proprietary console games. I feel like a sellout when I work with other proprietary programs.)
Well, that's true, but you can't deny that working with a decompiled binary takes more expertise than working with commented source code.
More importantly, you're talking about working contrary to the wishes of whoever provided the binary. They've not supplied source code because they don't *want* you to modify it. It may or may not be legal wherever in the world you are -- but regardless, you've chosen to use software which the creator wants you to not modify. You can fight them, and you can get it done. You might even avoid getting into an arms race, where they try to obfuscate the logic.
But isn't it easier, and more satisfactory, from an engineering perspective, to be working with the grain? In an environment where you can discuss the best way of implementing your feature with the community? Where you can merge it into the main project, and others will benefit -- and you may benefit from suggestions or even code provided by other users?
Not the point. The point is that they should, and Stallman is trying to make that happen.
I'll bite. Why should I care? Give me the elevator pitch. Try not to use any lies or paranoid delusions.
Stallman began his computing career in an environment where if something irked you about the way a system worked, you'd fix it. Even though he was working on the proprietary DEC UNIX (I think), customers got the source code, and it was fairly routine to fiddle with it to make it more like how you wanted it, and where appropriate, send a patch back to DEC in case they wanted to merge it into their core distribution. Of course it was early days, and source code control was a bit haphazard, and nobody really thought too hard about the ownership of the code, since the money was in the hardware. That's why if you look for a diagram of UNIX/BSD's heritage, it's so complex.
So one day, Stallman gets fed up of going to the print room only to find that his job's not printed yet because it's stuck behind someone else's. And he thinks, I know, I'll do a quick mod to the print queue code so that it emails the user when it's printed. So he asks for the source code, and he's told, no, he can't have it. This is a completely new paradigm for him -- he had not until then considered that anyone might deny him the ability to improve the software he's using.
And he thinks, how can this be a positive thing for anybody? This is preventing the software from improving, for no reason. He can see how the software might be better, he knows how to achieve that, yet somebody is actively denying him from doing that.
And that's still the question today. How can it be a good thing, that you are not *allowed* to improve the software you supposedly "own"? Even if you can't program, how can it be a good thing that you're not allowed to ask your programmer buddy, or programmer employee, to improve it to your specifications?
And that's why you might care. You don't have to .
Many of us have got accustomed to using software under these restrictions; we might decide there are factors that mitigate the restrictions (e.g. we might argue that the software would not have been written in the first place, if it were not going to be distributed under a restrictive licence). Stallman cut his teeth on software that didn't have those restrictions, and it upsets him sufficiently that he never uses non-free software where a free alternative exists - creating free alternatives wherever he can.
BTW, does anybody have know when the last time his name was on the "commit" of any open source project?
I don't -- but since he wrote huge chunks of GCC, bash and all the standard UNIX command clones used in Linux, Cygwin etc. I daresay you execute some of his code hundreds or thousands of times a day.
He cannot be accused of not practising what he preaches.
Come on, he ain't bad. I mean if you had to choose between him an Knuth to be your CS conference keynote speaker, you'd pick Knuth -- but you'd happily settle on Lamport if Knuth wasn't available.
Maybe I'm not informed well enough about what free software really is.
That seems to be the case, yes.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
I don't mean to be rude (really!) but it's probably worth being familiar with the FSF's stance, before weighing into the debate.
As I've pointed out in another thread, the traditional analogy is the buggy-whip manufacturer.
Although free software won't destroy software development as a profession (because as long a software needs to be developed, someone will pay for it to be done) -- even if it did, why should we care.
Let's say I design lace wraps for coffee cups. Should I stamp my foot in outrage at anyone who suggests these are a waste of time -- because I have a family to feed and the world owes it to me to preserve my profession of lace coffee cup wraps?
(A pathetic lapse in imagination, that particular surreal and useless invented product, but that point still works)
The logical conclusion of a free software movement is the elimination of professional programmers,
Let me stop you right there, halfway through your first sentence.
There are lots of professional programmers, writing free software for a living.
Even if that were not the case, lots of "progress" has eliminated certain jobs. I believe the buggy-whip manufacturer is the usual one to cite.
I'm not sure I understand what's happened here. It certainly looks like a computer animation!
Is each frame a separate photo? Just cropped to line up with the previous one, cleaned up and colour-treated to match?
Or is there a lot more artifice going on?
U-huh, and if you're willing to spend enough, you can commission a complete bespoke app.
But that's quite different from paying someone a couple of day's consultancy rates to customise qmail or whatever to your needs.
Or, what I assume you were talking about, buying off-the-shelf software -- you have very little influence as to what that software is like. If you have a requirement that's not shared by thousands of other people, you won't get it.
FWIW, RMS's road-to-Damascus moment was when he decided it would be neat if their printer driver would email the user, once their print job had completed. He was used to being able to get the source for this kind of thing, and make changes to it. He was astonished and disappointed when DEC (I think) told him they wouldn't let him have the source.
This is the problem with Stallman as an advocate. He's got no shades of gray. Fanatics make terrible representatives for a cause, because in a world with billions of people, the chance to get even part of what you want, without some sorts of compromise, is non-existent.
I think hardliners (to pick a word without the connotations of "fanatic" or "extremist") are quite useful in achieving a compromise.
I spent my youth disagreeing with hard-line Welsh nationalists, but I've come to realise that without their extreme demands (which they have not achieved), the Welsh language would have been killed by London-led government policy. I think the moderate situation we have now is about right, but it wouldn't have come about without the hardliners demanding something stronger.
Likewise, I'm glad of hard-line anti-war campaigners. I know there are situations on the global stage where the last resort of armed conflict becomes appropriate -- but I want peaceful resolution to be pursued wherever possible, so I'm grateful that there's a lobby demanding there be no war under any circumstances.
I don't see what you mean at all.
If the source is open, I can ask any programmer to modify it for me, in an arrangement that only involves me, the programmer, and some cash (or, as we said, some other incentive; friendship, sexual favours, challenges to geek pride, reciprocal work). There's an open market, so I should be able to find someone who'll do it for a price that reflects the difficulty of the job. Even if I am capable of programming it myself, I might be able to find someone who's inclined to do it for me at a price that suits me better than putting in the time myself. In fact, that happens all the time -- someone pipes up on a mailing list that a feature would be nice, and an enthusiast implements it for fun the next day.
If the source is closed, I can only ask whoever holds the source, and they can quote me a price. If I don't like the price, I'm out of luck. The levers you've suggested -- passing laws, voting with wallets, etc. require a mass of people who want the same feature as I do, and that might not be the case.
As long as programming is not understood by users, the source might as well be not open, because they can not read and make sense of it anyway.
If you can't program, you can get someone else to do it for you -- either with money, or with some other persuasion technique.