It is "massively" multiplayer though, I don't know of any single player games like that.
Shockwave's "Battle of Britain 2" is a single player title with realistic plane numbers, IOW around a 1000 airplanes over the the UK and about 300 so near that you can see them in 3D. It is a hardcore title with realistic physics and AI. Airplane graphics are good, terrain is realsitic but not state of the art. I may be biased though, as I am a developer;).
There are several open sourced games that are or were commercial. One of the most up-to-date is "Battle of Britain", a flight simulator that was written by Rowan software. When they were bought by Empire, and when it was decided they should leave the small Windows flight sim market (no joke, they now code console titles), they open sourced "Battle of Britain" and some time later "Mig Alley". These are fairly state-of-the-art, 600 000 lines games with the experience of approx 10 previous flight sims inside.
They are windows only, but could be ported to Linux. I expect that for example the flight model and the famous artificial inteligence would port straight forward. The main parts to port would be the directx stuff and the user interface, which is in MFC.
So I will not be accused of false advertizing, I also have to tell you that - I am the lead developer of the non-for-profit BDG, the "Bob/ma Development Group". - To play the complete game, you need the artwork and for that have to buy the game. However, there are demos of BoB/MA out and at least for MA you can use a recompiled exe with that. - You may be dissapointed in the source code, since it has little comments etc. - Unfortunately, it is not GPLed. Find the license here: http://www.3d-raumplan.com/wk_privat/downlo ad/bobl icence.txt
The code (16MB) can be found in the download section of http://www.simhq.com/ The BoB forum on the same site is the main hangout for the community. Also, you might want to look here: http://www.3d-raumplan.com/FlightSim
Another open source flightsim is flightgear, see www.flightgear.org . But that does not need porting, that already runs under Linux;-).
Thanks for that link. I just got out the HP 35 and it still works! My father bought it ages ago, at something like 700 DM. Today you can get a new PC for that. But I still remember the excitement in my parents that they could simply press a key and there would be the sinus or a root of a large number. In the old times, they had to do everything by hand with a slide rule or a logarithm table. I think I still have that lying around. In the war, my mum was a computer. In America, this is the official name that the NASA used for the people there doing this job.
BTW, there is a very nice, old SciFi story by Robert Heinlein. In it, there is a space ship designer who is in love. To show how badly in love she is and how good a designer she normally is, he wrote that she had to look up a 9-digit logarithm in the tables instead of simply remembering it;).
The problem isn't the card, so much, as the database that goes with it.
When they take your digital picture, and scan your fingerprints,
they don't just go on the card, but also in a database.
American people have rejected time and time again mandatory fingerprinting of all citizens.
The card is just a smokescreen which diverts attention away from the database.
With a database of fingerprints and faces, combined with video cameras and face
recognition technology, the government could literally track your every move and
there isn't a damn thing you could do about it.
I agree - the problem is not the card, but what kind of data gets into the database and how often.
The only persons who may force me to show the card are police men. I would guess in America
police also checks for drunk driving and when they check you can find out who you are? So, I don't see the big difference there.
I got checked quite seldomly - I can't remember being checked once as a pedestrian and was checked only maybe every 2-5 years when driving, once during carneval when many people drive around drunken. From these few cases they can't do a "tracking" as in "every friday he goes to the strip bar". There are givernment video cameras in a few places. I and I think most Germans find that much more dangerous. Luckily, it is very, very seldom. Actualy the only place I know from the top of my head where the government has cameras is in Hannover central station, which really is a trouble spot. If these would become more commonplace, there would probably be people protesting. There are also cameras in supermarkets etc, but they don't have the government records or your ID, so this is not related tp the issue we are discussing.
In Germany, the government gets your ID, but in practice very seldomly, and private companies get
it almost never if you don't want to and, for example, pay by credit card.
In my homecountry, Germany, you have to register with the city you live in, tell them where you live and, if you move, unregister with your old city and register in the new one. They can always track you. You have to have an ID card. It carries your address, height, weight, place of birth and your picture. If you move within the country (see above) you have to have it updated.
Well, that's a good enough reason right there. Looks like you answered your own question.
I think the word "track" can mean very little or very much. Some people here seem to think the government knows each day of the week or each week where you are. In fact, the police just knows where you live (and of course previous crimes).
How does it work in America, do you not have to tell people where you live? What happens if you stop paying tax and move or take credit and move and stop paying back?
The problem is not ID, it is what to do with the data and which data to correlate. For example,
may the government sell it to private companies or may it get data from private companies? May different branches of the government (for example police and tax office) correlate their data? Normally the laws on this are very strict and almost anything is prohibited. However, when we had the terrorists in our country in the 70's, the so called "RAF" Rote Armee Fraktion, we had the "Rasterfahndung". This means that for this purpose, all the government data and even some private data was correlated. Actually, this worked surprisingly well and they found a home of terrorists holding a hostage from very "innocent" data that they checked against each other. It was very bad luck, that they found it a short while after they moved apartments again, but it shows that this databank mining method works in practice.
I have no problem with the ID card - I do have bad feelings with the "Rasterfahndung".
It was probably more good than bad at that time to fight the danger. For example, in a captured plane in Mogadishu, after days of waiting and with nerves already on edge, the terrorists
put all the liquor over the heads of the hostages and had lighters ready. I don't want to think about what the passengers felt:-(. Luckily, the government was able to make them believe
they won and then send in the GSG9 which shot all the terrorists save one that was also put out of action. They are just now, after 11.9, reintroducing "Rasterfahndung". Like I said, *this* is something to keep an eye on. There are quite a lot of laws against abuse, for example, they may use the results only against terrorists and have to destroy the data after using it, but of course an abuse against this is harder to detect than an abuse of the ID card. If someone wants to abuse my ID card, he has to ask me to show it to him and so it is much harder to abuse.
BTW, I don't want to say that America needs an ID card. Maybe the drivers license is already the ID card, although I find it strange that non-drivers get driver licenses then. Each country has its own history and what works for one may be difficult to attain for another, since there would be a transition, there is another culture etc. Each country has its own freedoms that it values, so we have much more of the freedoms we value than you and you have more freedoms that you value than us.
There are some good arguments in this thread against *this* kind of ID card in America.
However a kneejerk "ID => government against privacy => this must be bad" is too simplistic.
"You do not present your ID when you buy something"
Not yet. As AT&T used to say, "You will".
Obviously, you have not been to Germany. I always pay cash. I think I have payed non-cash maybe 10 times in my life.
I personaly am more comfortable with the German way. The reason of the ID card is that I *can* prove my ID if I
want to. If a company would ask for ID (hasn't happened to me) then I would not only say "get lost" but also
start a campaign against them. An exception is of course car rentals, that want your drivers license.
Also, banks want your ID, but there are quite strict laws about what banks may do with your data.
If we build a system that has the potential to be abused by individuals, by corporations, or by the state, then it will be abused.
The US system is much more prone to abuse than ours. When I show ID once a year to travel, all few years when moving,
all few years when I need a rental car etc, then the chance of abusal is much less then when I give my name almost
every time I buy something to many, many employees of many, many companies.
True. At LinuxTag, the biggest european open source exhibition, there was a talk by someone from the economy ministry that told people under which circumstances they can apply for funding of open source development.
You can already find out the cell that your mobile phone is in via internet, see here (genion.de, German only, sorry). So, if you don't know whether its in the office, at home or with your girl friend (if you have one), then you can find that out.
This article is nothing more than more of the same pseudoinformation (propaganda?) that the American media has been bombarding us with. The corporate propaganda machine is in full cry, preparing Joe-sixpack for the loss of freedom that is soon to come.
The article is against passing an anti-crypto-law now.
In any case, scientists should only concern themselves with "is it possible?" not "should we make it available?"
So, politician should decide? Or voters?
Will they understand all the details of all the hundreds and thousands of technologies that are being developed ?
You underestimate the Wright brothers. While of course they could not foresee the WTC bombings, they did think about possible use of airplanes in war.
You seem to imply we should simply create things when we can create them. Most inventors in earlier times (like the Wrights) had higher morale standards than that.
I put myself in situations where I could die (Arguably 10 times a week as I commute to and from work) because I refuse to live in fear. I enjoy hang gliding
That's funny - so do I. I fly a Wills Wing Falcon:-)). However, I would not do it if it would not be worth it to me.
Regarding fear, there are two things one could call fear:
- There is what one might also call caution. For example, I have driven an hour by car to the launch, find the wind bad and drive home again. This is a good sort of fear. From an evolution standpoint, it is why fear exists. It is better to be on the ground and wish one is in the air than vice versa:-).
- There is what one might also call panic, where the fear affects what you do. My teacher once told me about one pupil on his first heigh flight, who totaly froze because of his fear. Or, for example, the final is over a cable railway (funicular?) and you are so much afraid of touching it that you fly much too high, even though you know you will overshoot the landing site.
It seems fairly obvious to me that we should avoid panic, but should try to be cautious. Of cause, like most things in life, caution is one of several variables and we should look for a local/global optimum.
I think inventions are similar, there are several things to consider when deciding for or against them (or for or against an area of work): What good effects does it have, what bad effects through missuse or accidents, how much does it cost moneywise, how much time does it take etc.
Or perhaps the women who infiltrated Afghanistan in defence of native women being slaughtered by the Taliban were only able to get their stories out -- stories that have been publicized time and again over the past few years, and that have nothing to do with the present crisis -- because they're able to communicate securely.
There certainly are good uses to strong crypto, but this is not one of them. If the Taliban find out you use strong crypto, and understand what that is, they will simply kill you. You can get exactly the same effect with weak crypto:
If it reaches the west, the west can publish it. If it reaches the regime, and they understand what crypto is, they will kill you. Such regimes are build on fear. So, when they find you using crypto, they will punish you as if they know that the worst possible thing was in the note (probably a howto overthrow the Taliban).
I mean really, smashing atoms and (trying to create) black holes certainly seem to meet the criteria for arrogance.
First of all, I don't think smashing atoms is arrogant. Even if it were, the parent spoke of being arrogant by doing something simply because it is possible. The work done for years at the colliders has brought many new insights at little risk (apart from the risk to our wallets:-)). Therefore it was a good thing.
Regarding the attempt to create black holes, that is exactly an example where I would say: We shall not do it, even if we can.
They *think* the black holes will be harmless because they will evaporate. The evaporation is based on quantum gravitation effects. But we have no consistent quantum gravitation theory, it's that theory of physics which is in the worst state! Nobody can confidently say whether the black holes will evaporate or do unimaginable harm.
This risk is completely out of proprtion to the possible increase in knowledge. Once we have a quantum theory of gravitation, that changes. Also, if we see small, evaporating black holes due to extra terrestrial rays (the physicists say there should be some naturally produced black holes that are similar to the ones they want to produce artificially), then we know the danger is small and can go ahead.
BTW, this example also shows that the argument "if we don't do it, someone else will" does not always hold water. I haven't kept up with the colliders, but would not be surprised if this experiment is only possible at one collider now and in the next 10 years at say 3 colliders. Therefore, we have IMHO the chance to hold back this danger for 10 or more years.
In the 40's, scientists in the United States, Germany, and Russia were all very rapidly untangling the secrets of nuclear fission, nominally for use in weapons.
The possibilities for nuclear weapons and peaceful use were known fairly much around the globe in the 30's.
While saftey questions, many of which are unfounded, still abound, its apparent that fission energy will be the cheapest, safest, and and cleanest energy that mankind can harness
That is your thinking. I am "only" a theoretical physicist by education. A friend of mine, who is now a professor in Trier worked in civil nuclear power and is very critical.
Most of the computer technology we use ultimately arises from the work of men who's research also led to military uses and was used in the construction of atomic weapons
Certainly not "most". For example, much early work in WWII was for breaking codes. There was also work regarding trajectories and of course before and after WWII (and a bit even during WWII) there was basic, non military oriented research.
Most scientists don't think in terms of 'how can I create a better, more deadly weapon'. They think in terms of unlocking the secrets of the universe. These actions, just like any other actions, have positive and negative consequences
I think we should speak about scientists, engineers and developers here. But even if we just speak about scientists, the majority does not do basic research.
To those who say "tools are just tools, it's people that are good or bad," I'd like to pose this question.
The people who say "Tools are neither good or evil" obviously (?) also think "... so, their creators are neither good or evil". I *strongly* disagree with this. Don't think crypto, the NY times article was agreed that genie is out of the bottle. There are gadgets that can almost only be used for evil things, for example nail bombs. IMHO everyone hould be responsible enough not to devlop or create them or publish descriptions on his homepage.
Isn't it the responsibility of those who create or disseminate tools to understand the context into which they release them?
Yes. They should understand the context, for example, someone in a tirany should be more careful. They should also see the danger of evil use or of accidents. Sometimes, it is so complicated to understand all the implications, that politician should be trusted even less than normally. Who should understand a gadget better than the developer?
...Does the analogy extend to scientists?
Yes. If anything, scientists / engineers / developers should be more inteligent than the rest. Also, they should be able to put reason (I should not develop xyz because the danger is too large) over emotion (I want to get the fame). BTW, I had a similar example to yours in an old post of mine, sorry for repeating it:
Lets say the Taliban asks a company doing nuclear reactors to build an abomb for them. They do, since it brings money and an abomb isn't evil, its just a tool. The Taliban say deliver it to Washington. So, the company does. One Taliban suicide terrorist explodes the bomb. Would you say only this person is responsible, not the management, not the workers (lets suppose they knew everything)? Not the scientists? Not the driver?
Do they have some responsibility to take part in social, political, etc. processes to ensure that the world they release their tools into is ready and capable of making ethical and moral use of them?
Yes everyone is responsible for all forseeable, good or bad effects of his deeds.
If so, what are the minimum requirements and limits of this responsibility?
The requirement is that the person was able to forsee it, that his deeds have more bad than good effects and there was an better alternative, for example, not developing xyz. A limit might be if you or your family are in grave danger. However, if you think about developing something or not, even in a tyrany, there is almost no danger. Nobody *can* know whether you work on your project full steam or half hearted.
It seems at that time scientists took their responsibility much more serious than we (the slashdot crowd) take it. Lots of scientists (more than other people) emigrated and some of those helped the allies. You might want to for example check who headed the theoretical section of the Manhattan project (Hans Albrecht Bethe).
Even of those who stayed (for example because of fear for their relatives), quite a lot saw their responsibility and just helped the Nazis as much as they had to. Without these two groups of people, the war would certainly have been longer and cost even more lives, on both sides.
In the US, the average person has 7 different jobs in his life. In Germany, the average is not much above 1. For example, my father always was a physicist, my mother always a teacher, and I will probably always be a sw developer.
But it is true in Germany/Europe as well that the thinking becomes ever more short term.
I see "real" reasons for the dot com crash, for example no buisiness plans and too little consumer spending via the internet.
But IMHO purely due to psychologic reasons many excellent people are fired as well in healthy industries (for ex. game development). Probably in a few years they will massively hire again. But lots of people have to move, have to "get dialed" into new working surroundings and new problems etc. I can't help but think that this is not the most economic way to do things.
Have you seen PLIB ?
This not only includes a portable (Linux, BSD etc, Windows, MacOS etc) scene graph on top of OpenGL and sound and input, but also the other stuff you need for games development like networking and graphical user interface.
So, if the Taliban bought an abomb from some Americans and delivered it to Washington, and the Taliban exploded it, the Americans would not be evil? After all, they only sold and drove around something that is not evil? They didnÄt use it?
You are trying to be more Zimmermannly than Zimmermann himself; He seems to say he did it because there are more good than bad effects of PGP, not because he doesn't care about the effects.
The main aim now should be to stop terrorism, not to help it. So, among other things, we should think about what the best case and the worst case are.
The wrost case - and I *VERY*, *VERY* much hope this won't happen is IMO this:
The US, "to show strength" (actually this would be showing weakness) does a massive air attack
on Afghanistan from Pakistany soil. Millions of enraged Pakistany throw out their leader.
Half a year later, a yacht anchors in San Francisco. The nuclear blast kills 150.000
straight away, another 250.000 die later or are seriously wounded. SF is no longer inhabitable.
The Pakistany and Indian A-Bombs are one of my top-ten worries for the world for a long time now.
Let's hope I am not prophetic.
You seem to be saying that because Zimmermann could forsee, when he wrote and released PGP, that it could be used for criminal purposes, he can be blamed for last Tuesday's attacks.
I feel very strongly that everyone is responsible for the forseeable effects of his actions.
So, Zimmemann *IS* reponsible for the good and bad effects (use by terrorism and crime in general) of PGP.
I am against the tens of posts saying (and each getting 2 karma points)
"if Zimmermann was responsible then so would xy and therefore Zimmermann has no moral obligations".
Whether the good effects outweigh the bad ones is more difficult to say. IMHO the argument that you can use it against repressive governments is only valid
for a narrow band of goverments. Really bad governments will go after you when they now that you use encryption. OTOH it is clear that PDP can help criminals
in a democracy.
I don't want to speak about DeCSS and DMCA, since I have too little knowledge about that. (Yes, it is possible to read/. and not read posts about that;-))
Nor do I hold gun manufacturers responsible for every crime that gets committed with the weapons they produce.
Not for every crime - but most guns are designed to kill people and people that design or (to a lesser degree) manufacture them bear resposibility.
. It's a fact of life that some people will break our social rules and commit crimes, petty or atrocious, and while it's certainly respectable to do one's part to make it harder for them, if we deny ourselves basic rights like copyright fair-use and cryptographic privacy to protect ourselves from criminals, we're living in fear and that's just not right.
If people recognize their responsibility and handle accordingly, less sh*t will happen and there will be less fear. Saying "I don't want to live in fear" may not mean being not careful. For example, people that publish websites with the newest nail-bomb design are swines IMO.
Nail bombs can only be used to kill people. Even if you find seom "freedom fighters" that fight for good and have the chance to do something good (for example topple a totalitarian government and replace it with a democratic one), there are many more using it for bad uses.
These uses should be obvious to everyone - if someone still publishes this info, just to get famous or feel important (10 people died because of me - so I must be important), or simply because they have the means to do it, then this is a despictable act. If scientists / engineers etc just
do things because they can be done, then technology realy runs amok. Of course people say that "guns don't kill people, people do". Yes, we should try to educate people not to kill other people. But we will never convince everyone and therefore we should *also* try to minimize the oportunities people have to kill or hurt other people, whether on purpose or by accident.
The perfect solution to the world's problems hasn't been found yet, and might never be, but sticking our heads in the sand and outlawing anything that might possibly be used criminally definitely isn't it.
I don't think there is a perfect solution. So, we should use several non-perfect part-solutions. Outlawing things doesn't sound like sticking our heads in the sand. We should certainly outlaw things that are very dangerous and have little positive / freedom effects. For example, I would not like to live in a country where 5 year old have the freedom to drive around on public streets in cars.
Almost every freedom to one person eats slightly into the freedoms of the people around him. Freedom is not something absolute that you either have or don't have, but its often a matter of opinion. Is a 16 year old safe enough so that his driving around infringes the freedom of other people only a bit and increases his freedom a lot?
Is it more important that people can carry a gun and defend themselves or that the chance of people getting a gun is small?
Is the freedom to drive as fast you you can more important than the danger of someone driving into me at 200 km/h? BTW, in the last instance the US outlaws dangerous behaviour and reduces freedom for the drivers.
So, I definately think there are things that should be outlawed, the only question is which things should be outlawed. Regarding cryptography, now it is *completely* impossible to take it out of the hands of the criminals, therefore outlawing it makes no sense IMHO.
Certainly, things would be much simpler if we just made the world a police state and took away all rights.
My original post spoke about the responsibilty of each individual.
...write software. Any of these (well, maybe not poetry) can be used to do harm, but I, for one, am not willing to start giving up my humanity just because the world isn't always a nice place.
That the world is not always a nice place should not mean we should not not try to achieve that state. BTW, I feel completely human and free even though I would never publish "howto create bombs" on my homepage.
There may be several ways to defend Zimmermann. IMO, this is not one of them.
Some people imply or say openly openly that we could ask for the guilt of the inventors of the plane/the atom bomb (Einstein)/car manufacturers/airplane manufacturers etc. So, we should not hold Zimmermann responsible for what he did. Also, if he did not do it, others would.
For me, both arguments hold no water *at all*.
Lets say, I get a job in landmine design. I could use both arguments to take it. However, I personally would not and hope there are many people thinking like that.
Thank god there are quite a lot of scientists who think forward and try to avoid unethical things.
In WWII for example, there were quite alot of German scientists that kept ideas to themselves because they didn't want to help Hitler. For example, the head scientist (Heisenberg) on the German A-bomb project "sabotaged" it. Also, my father didn't tell his peers and superiours some of the ideas he had when he had to work on the V2 rocket. This was not very dangerous as long as you don't fake experiments, since noone can look into your head so you are fairly safe.
Lets get back to less extreme situations:
Most people watch movies and most of the movies are about heroes that go into danger to do the ethical thing. Somehow, most people find this great but obviously think ethics stops to be important when they leave the movie theater / TV chair. If they have to take a job that gets them a few hundred dollars less, they feel right to take the ubnethical job. We, as open source developers don't even have to take financial losses.
BTW, I don't want to come over as holier than thou (sp?). I am involved in an OSS that *might* have moral implications.
I am thinking about what to do for some time now. Its interesting though that of three people I spoke to about this, two dismissed it quite out of hand.
BTW, at least in Germany, there is quite a lot of literature about the responsibility of scientists. Much of it is because of the A-bomb, BTW.
I think everyone is responsible of what he did, as far as the effects could be forseen. Obviously, often there are good and bad effects.
Regarding the people mentioned in several posts:
- Car manufacturers: I think this is not ment seriously. Many more people use the car for positive things than are killed/injured in accidents. If people wouldn't think this, then they wouldn't use cars. Of course, it is different when they willingly take unneccessary risks.
- Airplane manufacturers: More or less the same.
- Einstein: I thought about this quite a lot when I was young. But in his position he *had*
to think that it is only a matter of time when Nazi-Germany would get the bomb and he knew the regime well.
So, doing the bomb in America was the lesser evil and he is justified IMHO. BTW, he himself thought about it long as well nd he didn't think that it was clear that he was without guilt.
- The Wright brothers:
They surely couldn't have forseen hijackings, if they could they would have thought we can find sufficient measures against it.
So, the only thing you can try to blame them for is the use of the airplane in war. Actually, they did forsee the use in war.
However, their thinking was:
Wars are lead by soldiers on the front to defend the (loved ones at) home and bring the spoils of war.
However, with the plane, for the first time, you can not completely defend your home. Therefore the point in waging war will go away.
This might sound ludicrous at first, but if you think back to the time of the Wrights, when wars were fought for land/fortune etc, it makes sense. It simply seems the Wrights underestimated the black side of the human soul.
I think everyone is responsible for his deeds and the Wrights certainly belong to my personal heroes.
For me posts like the parent to this are "I want Zimmermann to be innocent and the Slashdot crowd thinks like me so I don't need an argument that holds water".
It's interesting to note that of all the countries in the world, Americans are probably the safest.
Certainly not.
Measured against all countries, you are probably above average, but certainly not top. While there were few terrorist attacks in the U.S. up to last week, there are quite a lot of other countries that also lost only few or even no citizens to terrorists in the last years.
Regarding violent crime the U.S. is quite bad.
Regarding the number of death in hospitals, for example of newborns, some parts of the U.S. are worse than some parts of India. If you don't believe me, read the article about this in "Scientific American".
After the first world war Germany had to pay huge reparation costs. So, Fritz Haber tried to extract the gold from the sea water. Sounds ludicrous? Maybe, but IMHO it sounds even more ludicrous to create fertilizer from gases contained in the air - until you hear that Haber and Bosch did just that.
As you probably know, Battle of Britain will be open sourced. On the forum, at http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/boards/bbs/Forum4 0/HTML/002621.html someone asked how difficult it is to convert from Direct3D to OpenGL and then to port to Linux. Surprisingly (at least, to me), the answer was:
BoB uses D3D Bit this is sperated out into the lib3d.Dll - so, in theroy, all you would have to do is re-write that to give OpenGL support. The bigger problem would be converting the UI to not use the M/S MFC.
Slashdot Mirror
Shockwave's "Battle of Britain 2" is a single player title with realistic plane numbers, IOW around a 1000 airplanes over the the UK and about 300 so near that you can see them in 3D. It is a hardcore title with realistic physics and AI. Airplane graphics are good, terrain is realsitic but not state of the art. I may be biased though, as I am a developer
There are several open sourced games that are or were commercial. One of the most up-to-date is "Battle of Britain", a flight simulator that was written by Rowan software. When they were bought by Empire, and when it was decided they should leave the small Windows flight sim market (no joke, they now code console titles), they open sourced "Battle of Britain" and some time later "Mig Alley". These are fairly state-of-the-art, 600 000 lines games with the experience of approx 10 previous flight sims inside.
o ad/bobl icence.txt
;-).
They are windows only, but could be ported to Linux. I expect that for example the flight model and the famous artificial inteligence would port straight forward.
The main parts to port would be the directx stuff and the user interface, which is in MFC.
So I will not be accused of false advertizing, I also have to tell you that
- I am the lead developer of the non-for-profit BDG, the "Bob/ma Development Group".
- To play the complete game, you need the artwork and for that have to buy the game. However, there are demos of BoB/MA out and at least for MA you can use a recompiled exe with that.
- You may be dissapointed in the source code, since it has little comments etc.
- Unfortunately, it is not GPLed. Find the license here:
http://www.3d-raumplan.com/wk_privat/downl
The code (16MB) can be found in the download section of
http://www.simhq.com/
The BoB forum on the same site is the main hangout for the community. Also, you might want to look here:
http://www.3d-raumplan.com/FlightSim
Another open source flightsim is flightgear, see www.flightgear.org . But that does not need porting, that already runs under Linux
Thanks for that link. I just got out the HP 35 and it still works! My father bought it ages ago, at something like 700 DM. Today you can get a new PC for that. But I still remember the excitement in my parents that they could simply press a key and there would be the sinus or a root of a large number. In the old times, they had to do everything by hand with a slide rule or a logarithm table. I think I still have that lying around. In the war, my mum was a computer. In America, this is the official name that the NASA used for the people there doing this job.
;).
BTW, there is a very nice, old SciFi story by Robert Heinlein. In it, there is a space ship designer who is in love. To show how badly in love she is and how good a designer she normally is, he wrote that she had to look up a 9-digit logarithm in the tables instead of simply remembering it
The problem isn't the card, so much, as the database that goes with it.
When they take your digital picture, and scan your fingerprints,
they don't just go on the card, but also in a database.
American people have rejected time and time again mandatory fingerprinting of all citizens.
The card is just a smokescreen which diverts attention away from the database.
With a database of fingerprints and faces, combined with video cameras and face
recognition technology, the government could literally track your every move and
there isn't a damn thing you could do about it.
I agree - the problem is not the card, but what kind of data gets into the database and how often.
The only persons who may force me to show the card are police men. I would guess in America
police also checks for drunk driving and when they check you can find out who you are? So, I don't see the big difference there.
I got checked quite seldomly - I can't remember being checked once as a pedestrian and was checked only maybe every 2-5 years when driving, once during carneval when many people drive around drunken. From these few cases they can't do a "tracking" as in "every friday he goes to the strip bar". There are givernment video cameras in a few places. I and I think most Germans find that much more dangerous. Luckily, it is very, very seldom. Actualy the only place I know from the top of my head where the government has cameras is in Hannover central station, which really is a trouble spot. If these would become more commonplace, there would probably be people protesting. There are also cameras in supermarkets etc, but they don't have the government records or your ID, so this is not related tp the issue we are discussing.
In Germany, the government gets your ID, but in practice very seldomly, and private companies get
it almost never if you don't want to and, for example, pay by credit card.
In my homecountry, Germany, you have to register with the city you live in, tell them where you live and, if you move, unregister with your old city and register in the new one. They can always track you. You have to have an ID card. It carries your address, height, weight, place of birth and your picture. If you move within the country (see above) you have to have it updated.
Well, that's a good enough reason right there. Looks like you answered your own question.
I think the word "track" can mean very little or very much. Some people here seem to think the government knows each day of the week or each week where you are. In fact, the police just knows where you live (and of course previous crimes).
How does it work in America, do you not have to tell people where you live? What happens if you stop paying tax and move or take credit and move and stop paying back?
The problem is not ID, it is what to do with the data and which data to correlate. For example,
may the government sell it to private companies or may it get data from private companies? May different branches of the government (for example police and tax office) correlate their data? Normally the laws on this are very strict and almost anything is prohibited. However, when we had the terrorists in our country in the 70's, the so called "RAF" Rote Armee Fraktion, we had the "Rasterfahndung". This means that for this purpose, all the government data and even some private data was correlated. Actually, this worked surprisingly well and they found a home of terrorists holding a hostage from very "innocent" data that they checked against each other. It was very bad luck, that they found it a short while after they moved apartments again, but it shows that this databank mining method works in practice.
I have no problem with the ID card - I do have bad feelings with the "Rasterfahndung".
It was probably more good than bad at that time to fight the danger. For example, in a captured plane in Mogadishu, after days of waiting and with nerves already on edge, the terrorists
put all the liquor over the heads of the hostages and had lighters ready. I don't want to think about what the passengers felt
they won and then send in the GSG9 which shot all the terrorists save one that was also put out of action. They are just now, after 11.9, reintroducing "Rasterfahndung". Like I said, *this* is something to keep an eye on. There are quite a lot of laws against abuse, for example, they may use the results only against terrorists and have to destroy the data after using it, but of course an abuse against this is harder to detect than an abuse of the ID card. If someone wants to abuse my ID card, he has to ask me to show it to him and so it is much harder to abuse.
BTW, I don't want to say that America needs an ID card. Maybe the drivers license is already the ID card, although I find it strange that non-drivers get driver licenses then. Each country has its own history and what works for one may be difficult to attain for another, since there would be a transition, there is another culture etc. Each country has its own freedoms that it values, so we have much more of the freedoms we value than you and you have more freedoms that you value than us.
There are some good arguments in this thread against *this* kind of ID card in America.
However a kneejerk "ID => government against privacy => this must be bad" is too simplistic.
"You do not present your ID when you buy something"
Not yet. As AT&T used to say, "You will".
Obviously, you have not been to Germany. I always pay cash. I think I have payed non-cash maybe 10 times in my life.
I personaly am more comfortable with the German way. The reason of the ID card is that I *can* prove my ID if I
want to. If a company would ask for ID (hasn't happened to me) then I would not only say "get lost" but also
start a campaign against them. An exception is of course car rentals, that want your drivers license.
Also, banks want your ID, but there are quite strict laws about what banks may do with your data.
If we build a system that has the potential to be abused by individuals, by corporations, or by the state, then it will be abused.
The US system is much more prone to abuse than ours. When I show ID once a year to travel, all few years when moving,
all few years when I need a rental car etc, then the chance of abusal is much less then when I give my name almost
every time I buy something to many, many employees of many, many companies.
True. At LinuxTag, the biggest european open source exhibition, there was a talk by someone from the economy ministry that told people under which circumstances they can apply for funding of open source development.
You can already find out the cell that your mobile phone is in via internet, see here (genion.de, German only, sorry). So, if you don't know whether its in the office, at home or with your girl friend (if you have one), then you can find that out.
This article is nothing more than more of the same pseudoinformation (propaganda?) that the American media has been bombarding us with. The corporate propaganda machine is in full cry, preparing Joe-sixpack for the loss of freedom that is soon to come.
The article is against passing an anti-crypto-law now.
In any case, scientists should only concern themselves with "is it possible?" not "should we make it available?"
So, politician should decide? Or voters?
Will they understand all the details of all the hundreds and thousands of technologies that are being developed ?
You seem to imply we should simply create things when we can create them. Most inventors in earlier times (like the Wrights) had higher morale standards than that.
I put myself in situations where I could die (Arguably 10 times a week as I commute to and from work) because I refuse to live in fear. I enjoy hang gliding
:-)). However, I would not do it if it would not be worth it to me.
:-).
That's funny - so do I. I fly a Wills Wing Falcon
Regarding fear, there are two things one could call fear:
- There is what one might also call caution. For example, I have driven an hour by car to the launch, find the wind bad and drive home again. This is a good sort of fear. From an evolution standpoint, it is why fear exists. It is better to be on the ground and wish one is in the air than vice versa
- There is what one might also call panic, where the fear affects what you do. My teacher once told me about one pupil on his first heigh flight, who totaly froze because of his fear. Or, for example, the final is over a cable railway (funicular?) and you are so much afraid of touching it that you fly much too high, even though you know you will overshoot the landing site.
It seems fairly obvious to me that we should avoid panic, but should try to be cautious. Of cause, like most things in life, caution is one of several variables and we should look for a local/global optimum.
I think inventions are similar, there are several things to consider when deciding for or against them (or for or against an area of work): What good effects does it have, what bad effects through missuse or accidents, how much does it cost moneywise, how much time does it take etc.
Or perhaps the women who infiltrated Afghanistan in defence of native women being slaughtered by the Taliban were only able to get their stories out -- stories that have been publicized time and again over the past few years, and that have nothing to do with the present crisis -- because they're able to communicate securely.
There certainly are good uses to strong crypto, but this is not one of them. If the Taliban find out you use strong crypto, and understand what that is, they will simply kill you. You can get exactly the same effect with weak crypto:
If it reaches the west, the west can publish it. If it reaches the regime, and they understand what crypto is, they will kill you.
Such regimes are build on fear. So, when they find you using crypto, they will punish you as if they know that the worst possible thing was in the note (probably a howto overthrow the Taliban).
First of all, I don't think smashing atoms is arrogant. Even if it were, the parent spoke of being arrogant by doing something simply because it is possible. The work done for years at the colliders has brought many new insights at little risk (apart from the risk to our wallets
Regarding the attempt to create black holes, that is exactly an example where I would say: We shall not do it, even if we can.
They *think* the black holes will be harmless because they will evaporate. The evaporation is based on quantum gravitation effects. But we have no consistent quantum gravitation theory, it's that theory of physics which is in the worst state! Nobody can confidently say whether the black holes will evaporate or do unimaginable harm.
This risk is completely out of proprtion to the possible increase in knowledge. Once we have a quantum theory of gravitation, that changes. Also, if we see small, evaporating black holes due to extra terrestrial rays (the physicists say there should be some naturally produced black holes that are similar to the ones they want to produce artificially), then we know the danger is small and can go ahead.
BTW, this example also shows that the argument "if we don't do it, someone else will" does not always hold water. I haven't kept up with the colliders, but would not be surprised if this experiment is only possible at one collider now and in the next 10 years at say 3 colliders. Therefore, we have IMHO the chance to hold back this danger for 10 or more years.
In the 40's, scientists in the United States, Germany, and Russia were all very rapidly untangling the secrets of nuclear fission, nominally for use in weapons.
The possibilities for nuclear weapons and peaceful use were known fairly much around the globe in the 30's.
While saftey questions, many of which are unfounded, still abound, its apparent that fission energy will be the cheapest, safest, and and cleanest energy that mankind can harness
That is your thinking. I am "only" a theoretical physicist by education. A friend of mine, who is now a professor in Trier worked in civil nuclear power and is very critical.
Most of the computer technology we use ultimately arises from the work of men who's research also led to military uses and was used in the construction of atomic weapons
Certainly not "most". For example, much early work in WWII was for breaking codes. There was also work regarding trajectories and of course before and after WWII (and a bit even during WWII) there was basic, non military oriented research.
Most scientists don't think in terms of 'how can I create a better, more deadly weapon'. They think in terms of unlocking the secrets of the universe. These actions, just like any other actions, have positive and negative consequences
I think we should speak about scientists, engineers and developers here. But even if we just speak about scientists, the majority does not do basic research.
To those who say "tools are just tools, it's people that are good or bad," I'd like to pose this question.
...Does the analogy extend to scientists?
The people who say "Tools are neither good or evil" obviously (?) also think "... so, their creators are neither good or evil". I *strongly* disagree with this. Don't think crypto, the NY times article was agreed that genie is out of the bottle. There are gadgets that can almost only be used for evil things, for example nail bombs. IMHO everyone hould be responsible enough not to devlop or create them or publish descriptions on his homepage.
Isn't it the responsibility of those who create or disseminate tools to understand the context into which they release them?
Yes. They should understand the context, for example, someone in a tirany should be more careful. They should also see the danger of evil use or of accidents. Sometimes, it is so complicated to understand all the implications, that politician should be trusted even less than normally. Who should understand a gadget better than the developer?
Yes. If anything, scientists / engineers / developers should be more inteligent than the rest. Also, they should be able to put reason (I should not develop xyz because the danger is too large) over emotion (I want to get the fame). BTW, I had a similar example to yours in an old post of mine, sorry for repeating it:
Lets say the Taliban asks a company doing nuclear reactors to build an abomb for them. They do, since it brings money and an abomb isn't evil, its just a tool. The Taliban say deliver it to Washington. So, the company does. One Taliban suicide terrorist explodes the bomb. Would you say only this person is responsible, not the management, not the workers (lets suppose they knew everything)? Not the scientists? Not the driver?
Do they have some responsibility to take part in social, political, etc. processes to ensure that the world they release their tools into is ready and capable of making ethical and moral use of them?
Yes everyone is responsible for all forseeable, good or bad effects of his deeds.
If so, what are the minimum requirements and limits of this responsibility?
The requirement is that the person was able to forsee it, that his deeds have more bad than good effects and there was an better alternative, for example, not developing xyz. A limit might be if you or your family are in grave danger. However, if you think about developing something or not, even in a tyrany, there is almost no danger. Nobody *can* know whether you work on your project full steam or half hearted.
It seems at that time scientists took their responsibility much more serious than we (the slashdot crowd) take it. Lots of scientists (more than other people) emigrated and some of those helped the allies. You might want to for example check who headed the theoretical section of the Manhattan project (Hans Albrecht Bethe).
Even of those who stayed (for example because of fear for their relatives), quite a lot saw their responsibility and just helped the Nazis as much as they had to. Without these two groups of people, the war would certainly have been longer and cost even more lives, on both sides.
In the US, the average person has 7 different jobs in his life. In Germany, the average is not much above 1. For example, my father always was a physicist, my mother always a teacher, and I will probably always be a sw developer.
But it is true in Germany/Europe as well that the thinking becomes ever more short term.
I see "real" reasons for the dot com crash, for example no buisiness plans and too little consumer spending via the internet.
But IMHO purely due to psychologic reasons many excellent people are fired as well in healthy industries (for ex. game development). Probably in a few years they will massively hire again. But lots of people have to move, have to "get dialed" into new working surroundings and new problems etc. I can't help but think that this is not the most economic way to do things.
Have you seen PLIB ?
This not only includes a portable (Linux, BSD etc, Windows, MacOS etc) scene graph on top of OpenGL and sound and input, but also the other stuff you need for games development like networking and graphical user interface.
So, if the Taliban bought an abomb from some Americans and delivered it to Washington, and the Taliban exploded it, the Americans would not be evil? After all, they only sold and drove around something that is not evil? They didnÄt use it?
You are trying to be more Zimmermannly than Zimmermann himself; He seems to say he did it because there are more good than bad effects of PGP, not because he doesn't care about the effects.
The main aim now should be to stop terrorism, not to help it. So, among other things, we should think about what the best case and the worst case are.
The wrost case - and I *VERY*, *VERY* much hope this won't happen is IMO this:
The US, "to show strength" (actually this would be showing weakness) does a massive air attack
on Afghanistan from Pakistany soil. Millions of enraged Pakistany throw out their leader.
Half a year later, a yacht anchors in San Francisco. The nuclear blast kills 150.000
straight away, another 250.000 die later or are seriously wounded. SF is no longer inhabitable.
The Pakistany and Indian A-Bombs are one of my top-ten worries for the world for a long time now.
Let's hope I am not prophetic.
You seem to be saying that because Zimmermann could forsee, when he wrote and released PGP, that it could be used for criminal purposes, he can be blamed for last Tuesday's attacks.
/. and not read posts about that ;-))
...write software. Any of these (well, maybe not poetry) can be used to do harm, but I, for one, am not willing to start giving up my humanity just because the world isn't always a nice place.
I feel very strongly that everyone is responsible for the forseeable effects of his actions.
So, Zimmemann *IS* reponsible for the good and bad effects (use by terrorism and crime in general) of PGP.
I am against the tens of posts saying (and each getting 2 karma points)
"if Zimmermann was responsible then so would xy and therefore Zimmermann has no moral obligations".
Whether the good effects outweigh the bad ones is more difficult to say. IMHO the argument that you can use it against repressive governments is only valid
for a narrow band of goverments. Really bad governments will go after you when they now that you use encryption. OTOH it is clear that PDP can help criminals
in a democracy.
I don't want to speak about DeCSS and DMCA, since I have too little knowledge about that. (Yes, it is possible to read
Nor do I hold gun manufacturers responsible for every crime that gets committed with the weapons they produce.
Not for every crime - but most guns are designed to kill people and people that design or (to a lesser degree) manufacture them bear resposibility.
. It's a fact of life that some people will break our social rules and commit crimes, petty or atrocious, and while it's certainly respectable to do one's part to make it harder for them, if we deny ourselves basic rights like copyright fair-use and cryptographic privacy to protect ourselves from criminals, we're living in fear and that's just not right.
If people recognize their responsibility and handle accordingly, less sh*t will happen and there will be less fear. Saying "I don't want to live in fear" may not mean being not careful. For example, people that publish websites with the newest nail-bomb design are swines IMO.
Nail bombs can only be used to kill people. Even if you find seom "freedom fighters" that fight for good and have the chance to do something good (for example topple a totalitarian government and replace it with a democratic one), there are many more using it for bad uses.
These uses should be obvious to everyone - if someone still publishes this info, just to get famous or feel important (10 people died because of me - so I must be important), or simply because they have the means to do it, then this is a despictable act. If scientists / engineers etc just
do things because they can be done, then technology realy runs amok. Of course people say that "guns don't kill people, people do". Yes, we should try to educate people not to kill other people. But we will never convince everyone and therefore we should *also* try to minimize the oportunities people have to kill or hurt other people, whether on purpose or by accident.
The perfect solution to the world's problems hasn't been found yet, and might never be, but sticking our heads in the sand and outlawing anything that might possibly be used criminally definitely isn't it.
I don't think there is a perfect solution. So, we should use several non-perfect part-solutions. Outlawing things doesn't sound like sticking our heads in the sand. We should certainly outlaw things that are very dangerous and have little positive / freedom effects. For example, I would not like to live in a country where 5 year old have the freedom to drive around on public streets in cars.
Almost every freedom to one person eats slightly into the freedoms of the people around him. Freedom is not something absolute that you either have or don't have, but its often a matter of opinion. Is a 16 year old safe enough so that his driving around infringes the freedom of other people only a bit and increases his freedom a lot?
Is it more important that people can carry a gun and defend themselves or that the chance of people getting a gun is small?
Is the freedom to drive as fast you you can more important than the danger of someone driving into me at 200 km/h? BTW, in the last instance the US outlaws dangerous behaviour and reduces freedom for the drivers.
So, I definately think there are things that should be outlawed, the only question is which things should be outlawed. Regarding cryptography, now it is *completely* impossible to take it out of the hands of the criminals, therefore outlawing it makes no sense IMHO.
Certainly, things would be much simpler if we just made the world a police state and took away all rights.
My original post spoke about the responsibilty of each individual.
That the world is not always a nice place should not mean we should not not try to achieve that state. BTW, I feel completely human and free even though I would never publish "howto create bombs" on my homepage.
There may be several ways to defend Zimmermann. IMO, this is not one of them.
Some people imply or say openly openly that we could ask for the guilt of the inventors of the plane/the atom bomb (Einstein)/car manufacturers/airplane manufacturers etc. So, we should not hold Zimmermann responsible for what he did. Also, if he did not do it, others would.
For me, both arguments hold no water *at all*.
Lets say, I get a job in landmine design. I could use both arguments to take it. However, I personally would not and hope there are many people thinking like that.
Thank god there are quite a lot of scientists who think forward and try to avoid unethical things.
In WWII for example, there were quite alot of German scientists that kept ideas to themselves because they didn't want to help Hitler. For example, the head scientist (Heisenberg) on the German A-bomb project "sabotaged" it. Also, my father didn't tell his peers and superiours some of the ideas he had when he had to work on the V2 rocket. This was not very dangerous as long as you don't fake experiments, since noone can look into your head so you are fairly safe.
Lets get back to less extreme situations:
Most people watch movies and most of the movies are about heroes that go into danger to do the ethical thing. Somehow, most people find this great but obviously think ethics stops to be important when they leave the movie theater / TV chair. If they have to take a job that gets them a few hundred dollars less, they feel right to take the ubnethical job. We, as open source developers don't even have to take financial losses.
BTW, I don't want to come over as holier than thou (sp?). I am involved in an OSS that *might* have moral implications.
I am thinking about what to do for some time now. Its interesting though that of three people I spoke to about this, two dismissed it quite out of hand.
BTW, at least in Germany, there is quite a lot of literature about the responsibility of scientists. Much of it is because of the A-bomb, BTW.
I think everyone is responsible of what he did, as far as the effects could be forseen. Obviously, often there are good and bad effects.
Regarding the people mentioned in several posts:
- Car manufacturers: I think this is not ment seriously. Many more people use the car for positive things than are killed/injured in accidents. If people wouldn't think this, then they wouldn't use cars. Of course, it is different when they willingly take unneccessary risks.
- Airplane manufacturers: More or less the same.
- Einstein: I thought about this quite a lot when I was young. But in his position he *had*
to think that it is only a matter of time when Nazi-Germany would get the bomb and he knew the regime well.
So, doing the bomb in America was the lesser evil and he is justified IMHO. BTW, he himself thought about it long as well nd he didn't think that it was clear that he was without guilt.
- The Wright brothers:
They surely couldn't have forseen hijackings, if they could they would have thought we can find sufficient measures against it.
So, the only thing you can try to blame them for is the use of the airplane in war. Actually, they did forsee the use in war.
However, their thinking was:
Wars are lead by soldiers on the front to defend the (loved ones at) home and bring the spoils of war.
However, with the plane, for the first time, you can not completely defend your home. Therefore the point in waging war will go away.
This might sound ludicrous at first, but if you think back to the time of the Wrights, when wars were fought for land/fortune etc, it makes sense. It simply seems the Wrights underestimated the black side of the human soul.
I think everyone is responsible for his deeds and the Wrights certainly belong to my personal heroes.
For me posts like the parent to this are "I want Zimmermann to be innocent and the Slashdot crowd thinks like me so I don't need an argument that holds water".
It's interesting to note that of all the countries in the world, Americans are probably the safest.
Certainly not.
Measured against all countries, you are probably above average, but certainly not top. While there were few terrorist attacks in the U.S. up to last week, there are quite a lot of other countries that also lost only few or even no citizens to terrorists in the last years.
Regarding violent crime the U.S. is quite bad.
Regarding the number of death in hospitals, for example of newborns, some parts of the U.S. are worse than some parts of India. If you don't believe me, read the article about this in "Scientific American".
The point is that normaly sex is something good and normaly violence is something bad.
After the first world war Germany had to pay huge reparation costs. So, Fritz Haber tried to extract the gold from the sea water. Sounds ludicrous? Maybe, but IMHO it sounds even more ludicrous to create fertilizer from gases contained in the air - until you hear that Haber and Bosch did just that.
As you probably know, Battle of Britain will be open sourced. On the forum, at http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/boards/bbs/Forum4 0/HTML/002621.html someone asked how difficult it is to convert from Direct3D to OpenGL and then to port to Linux. Surprisingly (at least, to me), the answer was:
BoB uses D3D Bit this is sperated out into the lib3d.Dll - so, in theroy, all you would have to do is re-write that to give OpenGL support. The bigger problem would be converting the UI to not use the M/S MFC.