I would like to refine this question because I have some specific nits that I'd like to pick: why doesn't the client/server open a single port and listen on that instead of opening a new port for each file? Second, why don't the peers maintain and share information about other peers once the download has started-- going through the central tracker provides a central point of failure. Wouldn't decentralizing allow for a.torrent file to have a list of seeds, and then each of the seeds would be able to share information about peers, eliminating the need for a tracker altoghether?
It wasn't an analogy. It was a direct comparison. In each and every one of those cases the rules make the creative content more accessible because the user/viewer/reader/player/whatever doesn't need to learn a whole lot of stuff to get into the work.
If the Doom mods all feel like Doom that's because either the Doom engine really isn't very flexible-- of course it isn't, it's designed to allow you to walk through rooms and shoot stuff, I doubt there's much in the way of event logic available-- or the mod makers haven't been all that creative-- again, not unreasonable... why would anyone with a true creative flair want to spend time making mods for a game that is pretty repetitive by its very nature?
The problem is specific engines, not engines in general.
RIAA probably doesn't have as much to worry about since the technology isn't well suited for sharing mp3's.
Maybe not individual mp3s, no. But entire albums? Yes. In a non-lossy format? Not all that popular... yet. Or how about entire discographies as mp3s in a tarball? You bet yer hindquarters.
When you look at things like Kazaa being one of the most downloaded programs ever, you've got to know that limited amounts of copyright infringement are no more serious to the general public than going a few MPH (or KPH depending on your jurisdiction) over the speed limit. People just don't care.
The problem for BT is that in the face of Kazaa there is no impetus to form a user community which would expand the number of trackers running and host seeds in a more decentralized fashion. The few sites that list.torrent files seem to be frequent targets for DDoS. Well, that and the fact that the protocol itself is more of a proof of concept than a polished final version. I mean, what's with the eight separate ports that it tries to open? Why don't the clients get information from each other about other clients rather than having to centralize all of this meta-info thru the tracker?
Heh. Well, that wasn't the game. The game I'm thinking of was included entirely in the magazine (wistful sigh as I remember those days gone by, when we also could type in entire computer programs from listings in magazines)... but BloodBowl does look kinda fun... now if only someone would make a PS2 version.:)
Easily mod-able game engines, while allowing non-professional programmers to essentially create their own games, are the shackles to which game creativity is bound.
Not any more than conventional forms are a "shackles" in any other creative medium. Think about things like limericks, sonnets, haiku, comedy, landscape painting, TV sitcoms, anime, mystery novels, buddy cop films, science fiction tv, books, comics, movies, etc... in each case there are rules that govern the form, some more strict than others. In some cases, the challenge gets to be how to break the rule of the form while maintaining the form-- on the surface at least.
Indeed, while the Infocom z-machine isn't quite a "video game" it shows very much that a properly designed game engine can be a platform for creativity. I am sure there are creative Doom mods out there. But think of how many sim-type games there are where the possibilities are endless if you expose somewhat the internals of the engine: car, flight, city, wargame, etc. Then think of some other game systems that exist, like card games (both conventional deck and collectible), RPGs (non-computerized), board wargames, etc.
That said, the one video game I'm waiting for is "fantasy football", only when you think "fantasy" think Tolkien. This was a game that was included in a Dragon magazine I had back nearly 20 years ago and it was hilarious. And even in this case, look at the constraints of form that enable such a game to be readily understood by new players: the whole fantasy genre informs the choices for monster/players and the basic sense of what the game is about.
Wow, you really need to lighten up. On the one hand, I was serious. The movie was horrible. I won't be paying for it again (please note that I didn't get to see it for free, I have already paid once to see this film-- I don't think you understood that, which is why I'm saying it again explicitly). They won't lose any of the money I've already given them if I happen to get a free copy from somewhere.
On the other hand, you missed the sarcasm. I have no more right to a free copy than the person I was responding to does. However, in both cases, the amount of money to be made off the consumers is about the same (in my case, very little, in his case a bit more). Either copying is justified because it is, or it isn't. Whether you have seen the movie in the theater eighty times and bought the VHS, the DVD, the VCD, the collector's edition VHS, the director's cut DVD, the holographic version, the computer game, and Carrie-Anne Moss' latex outfit off eBay or not, the justification for copying has the same validity.
Just FYI, it was a patent issue with the SQL Server case, not a copyright. There is a big difference... especially since the typical Free Software adherent tends to (as I do) feel that software patents should not be valid patents. If I had my way, MS wouldn't even have needed to license Timeline's patent on an algorithm.
Oh, and remember to wait for the credits to finish after the movie ends, you get to see a preview of Matrix Revolutions that is coming ( I think ) this
November.
And here I thought Reloaded was the trailer for Revolution.
1) Tax credit? How do you manage that? I just get a deduction, which is a reduction of my taxable income rather than a credit on my tax. The best charitable contributions can do is reduce your tax to $0 by reducing your taxable income to $0. If you could actually count a contribution as a tax credit, you might have a negative tax, as is the case with the Earned Income Tax Credit, which could result in a "refund" which is greater than the full amount of your tax withheld.
But enough nitpicking... I suspect the real difference between Microsoft "donating" these licenses and my donating a dollar value equal to the street price of a MS license is that MS gets to deduct the value of the license, not just how much it cost them to make the license. IOW, if the license normally costs $100, I could donate $100 and be out $100. MS, OTOH, can donate the license, even though the marginal cost of that software was only $20 (for printing the CD, manuals, and box, etc), but deduct the value of $100, even though they're only out $20. Nice trick... and I'd love to find out that I'm wrong, so if anyone knows better, please inform us!
2) "No such thing as bad publicity." Indeed, MS gets some bad press. But since the amount of "press" is essentially finite, this means less press for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, BSD, BEOS, or whatever.
I paid my $5 to see it in the theater-- and wow did that movie suck! I could justify downloading this movie since there's no way in h_ck I'd pay for any further copies of the movie. They aren't going to make another cent off me, so it's not like they're losing anything if I download it. In fact, if I don't get a free copy of Reloaded, the odds that I'm going to go see Revolution are increasingly slim, since I won't have built up any momentum for it. So in a way, they are more likely to get more of my money if, and only if, I can watch Reloaded once or twice more at no charge.
I don't know what you were thinking, but the opposite of anarchy is not civilization. The opposite of anarchy is monarchy or dictatorship. There was a tremendous anarchist movement during the 30's in Spain, which looks to have been an exceedingly civilized affair.
Right. That's my point. Look what has happened with Great Britain now that they no longer have an official religion. Or are you saying they've never had one, even in the time preceding and during their reign as one of the largest empires on the planet?
Actually it must have worked pretty well for Great Britain. At one time that little island was one of the dominant powers in the world! Now look at them. Not that I support state religion, but there is quite a bit of historical evidence that says that prosperity and national success are not harmed by a state religion.
The court, which includes a Black person and someone who is Jewish, did not appoint anyone. All the Supreme Court did was uphold the actual election, and shut off someone's illegal attempt to overturn it by tampering with the ballots. Why did you bring race or religion into it?
I didn't, dipshit. Lysol did in the post I was replying to.
So are you saying it would have mattered which rich, white born-again Christian the Supreme Court appointed? Think again. The Democrats have been failing to provide leadership on key alternatives since at least 1992 and as an "opposition" party they are about as useful as a dog rolling over to have its belly scratched. At least the Republicans attack from the front. The Ds are quite willing to stab their constituents in the back (DMCA, DOMA, PATRIOT, SSSCA, I could go on for days).
Yeah. Damn that ACLU standing up for civil liberties like not being forced to participate in other people's religions while attending compulsory educational facilities founded, funded and run by the government. I mean, who even cares about civil liberties anyway?
This is the United States. There is no such thing as "required reading".
No kidding. And even though we have compulsory education, many of our citizens are able to reach adulthood without being able to read at all! Which is probably good, otherwise they might read things like the Constitution and the USC and start to wonder about some of the inherent contradictions therein... I guess that's the result when even our legislators and executives are not required to read the very legislation they are voting to pass or signing into law.:)
SCO is alleging infringement. They're going to need to at least point out which parts of "Linux" are infringing (they don't say if it's strictly kernel code, the larger GNU system, or what).
In addition to pointing out which "Linux" code is infringing they are going to have to demonstrate how the code is infringing. Meaning, they have to prove that it was derived from code they had already written... otherwise, it could just as easily be alleged that they copied GPL Linux code into their product.
They will probably be able to convince a judge that disclosing their code publicly would harm their business... besides IBM already has that code, how else could they have infringed upon it? A 3rd party review under NDA does not seem unreasonable, given that if the IBM/Linux code is found not to be infringing then SCO should be able to keep their secret code a continued secret.
I am not a lawyer, but I do watch "Law & Order" religiously.;)
Re:FSF's Bradley Kuhn comments on SCO case
on
Today's SCO News
·
· Score: 1
And usually it's Microsoft trying to make it sound that they. Fabulous technique this: trying to tar your enemies with the brush of the evil you yourself harbor in your heart. Microsoft would love to centrally control the entire software economy. And not as a result of popularity contests like elections or free markets, but by executive fiat.
Slashdot Mirror
I would like to refine this question because I have some specific nits that I'd like to pick: why doesn't the client/server open a single port and listen on that instead of opening a new port for each file? Second, why don't the peers maintain and share information about other peers once the download has started-- going through the central tracker provides a central point of failure. Wouldn't decentralizing allow for a .torrent file to have a list of seeds, and then each of the seeds would be able to share information about peers, eliminating the need for a tracker altoghether?
It wasn't an analogy. It was a direct comparison. In each and every one of those cases the rules make the creative content more accessible because the user/viewer/reader/player/whatever doesn't need to learn a whole lot of stuff to get into the work.
If the Doom mods all feel like Doom that's because either the Doom engine really isn't very flexible-- of course it isn't, it's designed to allow you to walk through rooms and shoot stuff, I doubt there's much in the way of event logic available-- or the mod makers haven't been all that creative-- again, not unreasonable... why would anyone with a true creative flair want to spend time making mods for a game that is pretty repetitive by its very nature?
The problem is specific engines, not engines in general.
RIAA probably doesn't have as much to worry about since the technology isn't well suited for sharing mp3's.
.torrent files seem to be frequent targets for DDoS. Well, that and the fact that the protocol itself is more of a proof of concept than a polished final version. I mean, what's with the eight separate ports that it tries to open? Why don't the clients get information from each other about other clients rather than having to centralize all of this meta-info thru the tracker?
Maybe not individual mp3s, no. But entire albums? Yes. In a non-lossy format? Not all that popular... yet. Or how about entire discographies as mp3s in a tarball? You bet yer hindquarters.
When you look at things like Kazaa being one of the most downloaded programs ever, you've got to know that limited amounts of copyright infringement are no more serious to the general public than going a few MPH (or KPH depending on your jurisdiction) over the speed limit. People just don't care.
The problem for BT is that in the face of Kazaa there is no impetus to form a user community which would expand the number of trackers running and host seeds in a more decentralized fashion. The few sites that list
Ha. Just found it via eBay. "Monsters of the Midway" was in issue #65 of Dragon Magazine.
Heh. Well, that wasn't the game. The game I'm thinking of was included entirely in the magazine (wistful sigh as I remember those days gone by, when we also could type in entire computer programs from listings in magazines)... but BloodBowl does look kinda fun... now if only someone would make a PS2 version. :)
Easily mod-able game engines, while allowing non-professional programmers to essentially create their own games, are the shackles to which game creativity is bound.
Not any more than conventional forms are a "shackles" in any other creative medium. Think about things like limericks, sonnets, haiku, comedy, landscape painting, TV sitcoms, anime, mystery novels, buddy cop films, science fiction tv, books, comics, movies, etc... in each case there are rules that govern the form, some more strict than others. In some cases, the challenge gets to be how to break the rule of the form while maintaining the form-- on the surface at least.
Indeed, while the Infocom z-machine isn't quite a "video game" it shows very much that a properly designed game engine can be a platform for creativity. I am sure there are creative Doom mods out there. But think of how many sim-type games there are where the possibilities are endless if you expose somewhat the internals of the engine: car, flight, city, wargame, etc. Then think of some other game systems that exist, like card games (both conventional deck and collectible), RPGs (non-computerized), board wargames, etc.
That said, the one video game I'm waiting for is "fantasy football", only when you think "fantasy" think Tolkien. This was a game that was included in a Dragon magazine I had back nearly 20 years ago and it was hilarious. And even in this case, look at the constraints of form that enable such a game to be readily understood by new players: the whole fantasy genre informs the choices for monster/players and the basic sense of what the game is about.
Wow, you really need to lighten up. On the one hand, I was serious. The movie was horrible. I won't be paying for it again (please note that I didn't get to see it for free, I have already paid once to see this film-- I don't think you understood that, which is why I'm saying it again explicitly). They won't lose any of the money I've already given them if I happen to get a free copy from somewhere.
On the other hand, you missed the sarcasm. I have no more right to a free copy than the person I was responding to does. However, in both cases, the amount of money to be made off the consumers is about the same (in my case, very little, in his case a bit more). Either copying is justified because it is, or it isn't. Whether you have seen the movie in the theater eighty times and bought the VHS, the DVD, the VCD, the collector's edition VHS, the director's cut DVD, the holographic version, the computer game, and Carrie-Anne Moss' latex outfit off eBay or not, the justification for copying has the same validity.
Just FYI, it was a patent issue with the SQL Server case, not a copyright. There is a big difference... especially since the typical Free Software adherent tends to (as I do) feel that software patents should not be valid patents. If I had my way, MS wouldn't even have needed to license Timeline's patent on an algorithm.
Oh, and remember to wait for the credits to finish after the movie ends, you get to see a preview of Matrix Revolutions that is coming ( I think ) this November.
And here I thought Reloaded was the trailer for Revolution.
Thank you for the information.
1) Tax credit? How do you manage that? I just get a deduction, which is a reduction of my taxable income rather than a credit on my tax. The best charitable contributions can do is reduce your tax to $0 by reducing your taxable income to $0. If you could actually count a contribution as a tax credit, you might have a negative tax, as is the case with the Earned Income Tax Credit, which could result in a "refund" which is greater than the full amount of your tax withheld.
:)
But enough nitpicking... I suspect the real difference between Microsoft "donating" these licenses and my donating a dollar value equal to the street price of a MS license is that MS gets to deduct the value of the license, not just how much it cost them to make the license. IOW, if the license normally costs $100, I could donate $100 and be out $100. MS, OTOH, can donate the license, even though the marginal cost of that software was only $20 (for printing the CD, manuals, and box, etc), but deduct the value of $100, even though they're only out $20. Nice trick... and I'd love to find out that I'm wrong, so if anyone knows better, please inform us!
2) "No such thing as bad publicity." Indeed, MS gets some bad press. But since the amount of "press" is essentially finite, this means less press for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, BSD, BEOS, or whatever.
3) EOM.
I paid my $5 to see it in the theater-- and wow did that movie suck! I could justify downloading this movie since there's no way in h_ck I'd pay for any further copies of the movie. They aren't going to make another cent off me, so it's not like they're losing anything if I download it. In fact, if I don't get a free copy of Reloaded, the odds that I'm going to go see Revolution are increasingly slim, since I won't have built up any momentum for it. So in a way, they are more likely to get more of my money if, and only if, I can watch Reloaded once or twice more at no charge.
I don't know what you were thinking, but the opposite of anarchy is not civilization. The opposite of anarchy is monarchy or dictatorship. There was a tremendous anarchist movement during the 30's in Spain, which looks to have been an exceedingly civilized affair.
We can have anarchy, or we can have civilization.
False dichotomy.
Hmmm. You could, but those questions are much easier to answer definitively than your general statement about church and state not mixing.
Right. That's my point. Look what has happened with Great Britain now that they no longer have an official religion. Or are you saying they've never had one, even in the time preceding and during their reign as one of the largest empires on the planet?
Actually it must have worked pretty well for Great Britain. At one time that little island was one of the dominant powers in the world! Now look at them. Not that I support state religion, but there is quite a bit of historical evidence that says that prosperity and national success are not harmed by a state religion.
The court, which includes a Black person and someone who is Jewish, did not appoint anyone. All the Supreme Court did was uphold the actual election, and shut off someone's illegal attempt to overturn it by tampering with the ballots. Why did you bring race or religion into it?
I didn't, dipshit. Lysol did in the post I was replying to.
So are you saying it would have mattered which rich, white born-again Christian the Supreme Court appointed? Think again. The Democrats have been failing to provide leadership on key alternatives since at least 1992 and as an "opposition" party they are about as useful as a dog rolling over to have its belly scratched. At least the Republicans attack from the front. The Ds are quite willing to stab their constituents in the back (DMCA, DOMA, PATRIOT, SSSCA, I could go on for days).
You're full of shit. Not only that you're too cowardly to even put a fake name to your slander.
Yeah. Damn that ACLU standing up for civil liberties like not being forced to participate in other people's religions while attending compulsory educational facilities founded, funded and run by the government. I mean, who even cares about civil liberties anyway?
This is the United States. There is no such thing as "required reading".
:)
No kidding. And even though we have compulsory education, many of our citizens are able to reach adulthood without being able to read at all! Which is probably good, otherwise they might read things like the Constitution and the USC and start to wonder about some of the inherent contradictions therein... I guess that's the result when even our legislators and executives are not required to read the very legislation they are voting to pass or signing into law.
Thank you for the link. bkuhn and the FSF rule!
And usually it's Microsoft trying to make it sound that they. Fabulous technique this: trying to tar your enemies with the brush of the evil you yourself harbor in your heart. Microsoft would love to centrally control the entire software economy. And not as a result of popularity contests like elections or free markets, but by executive fiat.