Unfortunately, the web page I had with all the visualizations on it went down about a year and a half ago when I move to Seattle.
Call me up or otherwise contact me to hassle me about getting them online if you'd like to see them; I'll try remembering to dig them up.
In brief, the binary operator looked like a doctors stethascope, with the two prongs attached to points, and the long prong pointing to a final point. The picture (and icon) for closure was a sort of wiggly loop (the set) with the stethascope (3 lines and an arrow) having it's two inputs coming from within the set, and the output going back into the set.
Associativity looked like... uh... Hard to describe with words. It looked like a U with a U under it, and an upside down U with an upside U under it, attached in the middle; very hard to describe.
Identity: Draw the set with all the points lined up on the edge, and take one special element and put it on the interior. That's the icon form; for the complete picture, you add in the binary operator, one end on the identity, one end on an element, and the output going to the element.
Inverses... I'll skip to commutivity, since it's the easiest to draw; it looks like an X. The two elements on the top can switch places (the elements reversed on the bottom). It's a little rounded to show the "trajectory" of the two elements; that they cross over.
This is not very fruitful; I'll just have to put them back online... =^_^=
I agree; Your right, integration of knowledge is a higher problem. A friend of mine getting his PhD in Physics in Berkeley related a number of papers to me that said that even graduate physicists would resort back to Aristotilian models of the world (forced, natural, and animate motion, but mostly "forced motion") when confronted with problems that didn't match the ones they tackled in books.
But I think people who had a clear grasp through intuition and pictures would be better equipped to tackle the integration challenges.
One of my students came to class, and I asked him, "How's math going?" He replied, "Good, I just did great on a test on the Pythagorean theorem." I said, "Oh really? Did you show the teacher the proof I taught you?" He sort of looked puzzled, and said, "Hunh?" And I said, "Yeah, remember, 'Asquared + Bsquared + 2AB yadda yadda...'?" He said, "That's the Pythagorean Theorem?!"
The thing is, he knew this proof that I had shown him left and right, forward and backwards, inside and out. We'd gone over it several times. But since I didn't call it "The Pythagorean Theorem," he didn't have that link, and hadn't linked it up.
I also asked him, "If you have a spaceship at (5,3), and a missle headed toward it at (1,1), what's the distance between them?" He couldn't answer it. Then I gave him a triangle and asked for the length of the hypoteneus. He could do it. But he wasn't able to integrate the two ideas together until I manually showed him how. I remember having the same difficulties myself, a long time ago.
I think as humans, we're just really bad with our internal communication/thought and crossreferencing. It takes a certain degree of feeling like you have "ownership" of an idea, like you are holding it in your hand, and you are going to weild it like a weapon against all the other ideas and situations in the world. "Knowing how to get the length of a hypoteneus, how can we approach the problem of the distance between two points (positions specified by orthogonal vectors)".
I guess the thing is to make sure to ensure that students build a framework of interconnected ideas. I think the constructivist school of thought is a good idea; I wonder if there is a way to teach this a little more explicitly.
I think the worst problem with the way mathematics is taught (either from a teacher, or a book) is the lack of visualization. Indeed, there's an almost religious commitment to rigidity and formalism, when a lot of time, all we need is a little insight, and thenall the symbols will make sense.
Take abstract algebra for instance. It's really arcane and odd; What makes a group? Closure, Associativity, Identity, and Inverses. Most people believe that these things cannot be visualized, and so go on and on with really abstract lines like (AB)C=A(BC), eA=Ae=e, A(-A)=e, etc., etc.,. But these things *CAN* be easily visualized, it just takes the slightest bit of creativity. It's easy to teach these things with pictures, where you're just interfacing with people's intuitive understanding, rather than trying to go through a difficult semantics/symbol layer.
I've taught young kids how to identify groups (think abelian); It's really not a problem, provided you have their attention.
There is more insightfulness and depth in a single Clamp story than there is in all of Evangelion put together.
The only thing more boring than Evangelion is Dragon Ball Z. At least Evangelion has Asuka.
Let me plagerize, and save y'all $350 worth of videos. The plot follows:
Gendo is my father. MY NAME IS SHINJI AND I SUCK! Asuka: Yes, you do suck, Shinji! Rei: She's right, Shinji.
You suck. Hoji: YEAH! You suck! Unit-00: You suck. NERV Agent: YOU SUCK, SHINJI!
(There used to be a "thumbnail evangelion archive", but I can't find it. Anyone know the link?)
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Note: This is a shameless parody of... Some Site, and is not a statement from Ximian, or any other company. How's that? Is that silly enough?
I like the penguin. =^_^= It's cute. Bonobo are cool.
I've been playing with SDL on and off for about a year and a half now. Long ago, I wrote a VisualC-SDL intro, and submitted a bug fix. I've worked on BumpRace, and am working on a game that I plan to port from ClanLib to SDL soon, just to chop the dependencies down and ditch C++.
It sounds like you are talking about a home game programming project. If that's the case, then SDL should more than meet your need. In my experience, home game programmers tend to dramatically over-estimate their performance needs. Focus more on making your game do something interesting first.
As for the user community for SDL; it's huge, and quite friendly. There are a lot of projects out there that build on SDL, and there are bindings for Python, Perl, and many other languages. (For casual readers: SDL itself is in C.)
I really don't know what more you could ask for, except for it to become the world standard and have a dedicated hotline for support (DirectX). Other than that, it's all pretty much there.
I've had one opportunity to pair code in my life, and I wish I had more, becase from what I've seen, pair coding is the quickest ticket to the Zone.
You may be thinking, "What if I get stuck with Mihoshi. I'm a great coder, what if I get stuck with that jerk down the hall. I'm going to be doing all the work, and that guy down the hall's just going to be bothering me."
[shrug] It's a possibility. What I found, though, was that having another person with me was terribly concentrating, and it was like having laser attention. We'd come up with things that the other hadn't come up with, and it was easy to stay on target. Now I'm single programming, and I get distracted a lot. Sure, there's the occasional Zone time, but I don't know many people who can [alone] maintain Zone for prolonged periods of time.
I dislike that you have to be a Christian to work for RoleModel SofTware, but I like that they stand by their ethical values. I'd love to work for a company that had a pervading "ethics first" principal.
Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible -- just enough to cover the cost.
Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If this seems surprising to you, please read on.
The word ``free'' has two legitimate general meanings; it can refer either to freedom or to price. When we speak of ``free software'', we're talking about freedom, not price. (Think of ``free speech'', not ``free beer''.) Specifically, it means that a user is free to run the program, change the program, and redistribute the program with or without changes.
Free programs are sometimes distributed gratis, and sometimes for a substantial price. Often the same program is available in both ways from different places. The program is free regardless of the price, because users have freedom in using it.
Non-free programs are usually sold for a high price, but sometimes a store will give you a copy at no charge. That doesn't make it free software, though. Price or no price, the program is non-free because users don't have freedom.
Since free software is not a matter of price, a low price isn't more free, or closer to free. So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it.
Free software is a community project, and everyone who depends on it ought to look for ways to contribute to building the community. For a distributor, the way to do this is to give a part of the profit to the Free Software Foundation or some other free software development project. By funding development, you can advance the world of free software.
Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development. Don't waste it!
In order to contribute funds, you need to have some extra. If you charge too low a fee, you won't have anything to spare to support development.
Will a higher distribution price hurt some users?
People sometimes worry that a high distribution fee will put free software out of range for users who don't have a lot of money. With proprietary software (18k characters), a high price does exactly that -- but free software is different.
The difference is that free software naturally tends to spread around, and there are many ways to get it.
Software hoarders try their damnedest to stop you from running a proprietary program without paying the standard price. If this price is high, that does make it hard for some users to use the program.
With free software, users don't have to pay the distribution fee in order to use the software. They can copy the program from a friend who has a copy, or with the help of a friend who has network access. Or several users can join together, split the price of one CD-ROM, then each in turn can install the software. A high CD-ROM price is not a major obstacle when the software is free.
Will a higher distribution price discourage use of free software?
Another common concern is for the popularity of free software. People think that a high price for distribution would reduce the number of users, or that a low price is likely to encourage users.
This is true for proprietary software -- but free software is different. With so many ways to get copies, the price of distribution service has less effect on popularity.
In the long run, how many people use free software is determined mainly by how much free software can do, and how easy it is to use. Many users will continue to use proprietary software if free software can't do all the jobs they want to do. Thus, if we want to increase the number of users in the long run, we should above all develop more free software.
The most direct way to do this is by writing needed free software or manuals yourself. But if you do distribution rather than writing, the best way you can help is by raising funds for others to write them.
The term ``selling software'' can be confusing too
Strictly speaking, ``selling'' means trading goods for money. Selling a copy of a free program is legitimate, and we encourage it.
However, when people think of ``selling software'', they usually imagine doing it the way most companies do it: making the software proprietary rather than free.
So unless you're going to draw distinctions carefully, the way this article does, we suggest it is better to avoid using the term ``selling software'' and choose some other wording instead. For example, you could say ``distributing free software for a fee''--that is unambiguous.
High or low fees, and the GNU GPL
Except for one special situation, the GNU General Public License (20k characters) (GNU GPL) has no requirements about how much you can charge for distributing a copy of free software. You can charge nothing, a penny, a dollar, or a billion dollars. It's up to you, and the marketplace, so don't complain to us if nobody wants to pay a billion dollars for a copy.
The one exception is in the case where binaries are distributed without the corresponding complete source code. Those who do this are required by the GNU GPL to provide source code on subsequent request. Without a limit on the fee for the source code, they would be able set a fee too large for anyone to pay--such as, a billion dollars--and thus pretend to release source code while in truth concealing it. So in this case we have to limit the fee for source, to ensure the user's freedom. In ordinary situations, however, there is no such justification for limiting distribution fees, so we do not limit them.
Sometimes companies whose activities cross the line of what the GNU GPL permits plead for permission, saying that they ``won't charge money for the GNU software'' or such like. They don't get anywhere this way. Free software is about freedom, and enforcing the GPL is defending freedom. When we defend users' freedom, we are not distracted by side issues such as how much of a distribution fee is charged. Freedom is the issue, the whole issue, and the only issue.
Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
Thank you for the news, and good luck on your Nautilus development.
This is what is really heartening about the Free Software/Open Source movement- People really care about what they are doing.
It's an extremely valuable (economically, and personally) thing.
We structure our world capitalistically so that we can channel selfish motives. But the really successful ventures will also channel benelevolence. Thank you.
Yes, I have found that I have donated far more than I ever have in the past. This year, so far, I have donated $300.00, and plan to get to $1,200 by the end of the year. I have never donated in the past.
I blame PayPal. {;D}=
Luckily, the site you linked to didn't support PayPal; I'd be out another $5.00 if they did..!
What I have discovered, is that when you donate to projects, you give them much more than the little money you give them. That little bit of money allows them to do a whole lot more work.
Let's suppose someone has put 100 hours of work of their personal time into a project, but they're stuck now. They need $250.00 for some task. I don't know, web hosting for a year, or something like that. They've reached a wall, in terms of how much further they can go. When you pay that $250.00, not only are you paying for just removing that wall, but you are also getting a boatload of free work out of them! They may put in another 100 hours of work and enthusiasm, from your $250. If there were no obstacles, you just paid someone 2.50 an hour for a cause that you really believe in, and everyone's happy with it. I strongly believe that online donations are going to make the world a significantly better place.
I should have included this with the last email... These are awesome links.
First, some from electric sheep, a very socially conscious, interesting, and humerous collection of comics.
The Guy I Almost Was - everyone who works with technology and OpenSource/Free Software should read this, to get a sense of how some of our idealistic roots came.
The Jain's Death - An insightful and beautiful story on a Jain's lives.
Overheard at a Rave - A cute story about a daughter who takes her father to a rave with her.
Here are two Scott McCloud links.
Scott McClouds greatest works, unfortunately, are not online: Understanding Comics, and Reinventing Comics. Get them at a comic store near you, or at BarnesAndNoble.com. Here's some of his online work, which are of exceptional quality:
I Can't Stop Thinking! A meta-comic, also by Scott McCloud. Very interesting ideas are expressed here.
Scott McCloud's "Hearts And Minds" - not my favorite online comic, but a good taste of Scott McCloud's web form, doing things that could *NEVER* have been done in print. (Such as the falling scene in Week 3.)
I have a hard time respecting an article on web based comics that doesn't even mentionthe work of Scott McCloud, easily the person who has put the most thought and effort into the web as a medium for comics..!
Go check out Scott McCloud at once. The article we just read is under-researched.
I recently realized that, with the exception of Final Fantasy 9 (which is more of a story), I haven't played any games in a long time. "What am I doing?" I thought. I then realized that I was playing games, just other types of games: How can I help the Free Software movement, How can I maximize my contribution to society and self, how can I promote, learn about, and work on, groupware. Learning is also another type of game, that I play.
What's common to games? I liked the definition I read on the WorldForge project page: You've got a goal, you've got obstructions, and you try to meet the goal through the obstructions. And, that description matches the games that I play, video-game or otherwise (contributing, learning, etc.,.).
Now the question is: What seperates a game from Work? The description above seems to also describe work rather well. Almost by definition, I hate work, but I love games (Cosmic Encounters, for name-dropping). So what's the difference? For this, I draw on Taoism, that book "Flow" (John Carmak recently referenced it), and Miyamoto-sama, who emphatically repeated at GDC 1999 that the game-playing experience must be "comfortable". Perhaps the only difference between work and a game is that the game is comfortable, whereas the game is, well,... Work. I'm still working on this definition. (Mary Poppins said that with a spoonful of sugar, you just snap, and the job's a game. While I like this idea, I have trouble in the impementation; perhaps I'm just not snapping my fingers correctly. Maybe I need to meditate more.)
Given this description, what are the types of games that I'm interested in playing? Personally, I'm really interested in games that cross-over into the domain of my livelihood, and the livelihood of others around me. I'd like the principle of game-ness to shove out work-ness from my life. I wouldn't fret if work completely disappeared from my life. Computers fit the bill rather well. I've always considered the operation of computers to be something of a game, since I was a wee little one, and I've always had an intuition that it would pay the bills. (That intuition turned out to be right.) But still, there's a lot that's uncomfortable about it. It's just like when you're in the maze, and all the doors are locked, and there isn't a key in sight. You're absolutely stuck. You were slated to finish a programming task in 2 days, and it's taken you 2 WEEKS, and you still don't know how you're going to get out of it. This is an uncomfortable situation, and draws me out of the realm of the game, into the realm of work. Ugh. And I was trying so hard to get out of that realm. Where am I going with all of this? Well, I'm trying to establish the similarities and subtle differences between work and games, and then I'm trying to segue into how I think that we can structure things so that work can become more like a game. My ultimate goal is to get feedback from you, build interest in the subject, and have you send me links and other references to related lines of thought.
So, I've found this neat way of teaching that can make a game out of learning. It gives you immediate positive rewards, it helps out in the world (because you learn a valuable skill), and you don't get stuck with no keys and lots of locked doors, because it has a built in help line, that you can call on and get a quick piece of help.
The way I found I learned from Philip Greenspun. He uses problems and a community system as integral parts of the ArsDigita training program. It works like this: You have a number of problems, in gradually increasing difficulty, that the learner tackles. Lecture is rather secondary to the problem statements themselves. Lecture is useful, in so much as it helps with the problems. The problems are rather UNIX-like in that the goal is to teach the student one thing, and teach it well. Anyways, I've been working on installing the ACS, and it's been going well so far. Whenever I have a problem, I go to the web bulliten board, search for the problem. Most likely someone had it before, and I get the answer there. If not, I write an entry to the list, and within 5-15 minutes, get a reply. (Once I had to wait 6 hours, though...) The reply then goes on to the board, so that others can get the solution as well. In fact, it's like this with most of our online systems, except that the response time isn't as small, you have to sort through google entries, and usually you have to subscribe/unsubscribe to/from mailing lists, etc., etc.,.
Anyways, I've tried out the method of problem guides in the Fledging Unix Programmers class that I teach, and it's had excellent results. Problems show up when the difficulty between problems is too high, so I subdivide those intervals. It works great.
But what I'm really looking for is for other people to do the same thing.. There are a lot of times in my life where I have 2-3 hours spare, and I'd like to play a game in that time. I'd like a good set of 3-5 problems, workable within 2 hours total, that increase my knowledge about the Linux Kernel, PHP, How to use databases, link things up, make a small game, play with networking, etc., whatever. Do you know what I mean? (Please answer.) So what I'd like to have is, not so much HOW-TO's, but PROBLEM-GUIDE's. And support lines consisting of other people who are interested in the subject, and have completed the guides themselves. Well balanced problem guides. That way, I can play games on a daily basis that are comfortable, educational, and most importantly, fun.
"One of the best fundamental principles that anybody ever expressed to me about game design is that games should teach you how to play them."
Free Software and OpenSource Software wouldn't be anywhere near where it is today were it not for the Internet. The only reason Linux progresses as it has, I believe, is because we've had the Internet. It just wouldn't work with people mailing each other back and forth.
I believe that the next big steps in communication will come through groupware, and that groupware is the #1 thing that we can invest our time and energy in to, to receive maximal payback in the form of OpenSource and Free Software.
It needs to be dirt simple for us to create and destroy projects, set up mailing lists, votes, build databases collaboratively, vote, instant message, chat, etc., etc. When it's fluid, we'll reach a new level of community building and communication, which will redouble our ability to work over the Internet with one another.
We need to be able to easily embed groupware into our standard applications. It needs to be easy for a user to look something up in the documentation, note a minor bug, (spelling error? incompleteness? technical error?) make the adjustement, have the adjustment sent and approved by a moderator, and then applied to the text. All software should be able to easily manage docs like this.
We need to be able to say, "I need help," after looking through the docs, flag our ICQ or IM or whatever as "I am someone who needs help using THIS tool," and someone from the dev mailing list for that tool who has the "I am someone who can help you with THIS tool" flag set put in contact with you. It needs to be seamless, it needs to be easy, and it needs to be ubiquitous.
Another breakthrough will arrive when we can seamlessly communicate with audio-video over the web, between countries, and hold group meetings over the web.
Whenever you want to learn something, someone will be ready to teach you, face to monitor to camera to face.
Again, I think that the best thing you could work on if you want to improve OpenSource and Free Software is GroupWare.
The major changes we've seen coming from Open Source and Free Software are just the tip of the iceberg, and I think it's something that we should all be excited about and proud of.
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Absolutely; but the general trend is to overfocus on the formalism, and then to skimp on (or even discredit the idea of) the pictures.
We need both the formalism and the intuition for a healthy mathematical education.
laugh> I wish I got to see it..!
I'd never heard of "Category Theory" or commuting diagrams before; thank you for the reply..!
Unfortunately, the web page I had with all the visualizations on it went down about a year and a half ago when I move to Seattle.
Call me up or otherwise contact me to hassle me about getting them online if you'd like to see them; I'll try remembering to dig them up.
In brief, the binary operator looked like a doctors stethascope, with the two prongs attached to points, and the long prong pointing to a final point. The picture (and icon) for closure was a sort of wiggly loop (the set) with the stethascope (3 lines and an arrow) having it's two inputs coming from within the set, and the output going back into the set.
Associativity looked like... uh... Hard to describe with words. It looked like a U with a U under it, and an upside down U with an upside U under it, attached in the middle; very hard to describe.
Identity: Draw the set with all the points lined up on the edge, and take one special element and put it on the interior. That's the icon form; for the complete picture, you add in the binary operator, one end on the identity, one end on an element, and the output going to the element.
Inverses... I'll skip to commutivity, since it's the easiest to draw; it looks like an X. The two elements on the top can switch places (the elements reversed on the bottom). It's a little rounded to show the "trajectory" of the two elements; that they cross over.
This is not very fruitful; I'll just have to put them back online... =^_^=
I agree; Your right, integration of knowledge is a higher problem. A friend of mine getting his PhD in Physics in Berkeley related a number of papers to me that said that even graduate physicists would resort back to Aristotilian models of the world (forced, natural, and animate motion, but mostly "forced motion") when confronted with problems that didn't match the ones they tackled in books.
But I think people who had a clear grasp through intuition and pictures would be better equipped to tackle the integration challenges.
One of my students came to class, and I asked him, "How's math going?" He replied, "Good, I just did great on a test on the Pythagorean theorem." I said, "Oh really? Did you show the teacher the proof I taught you?" He sort of looked puzzled, and said, "Hunh?" And I said, "Yeah, remember, 'Asquared + Bsquared + 2AB yadda yadda...'?" He said, "That's the Pythagorean Theorem?!"
The thing is, he knew this proof that I had shown him left and right, forward and backwards, inside and out. We'd gone over it several times. But since I didn't call it "The Pythagorean Theorem," he didn't have that link, and hadn't linked it up.
I also asked him, "If you have a spaceship at (5,3), and a missle headed toward it at (1,1), what's the distance between them?" He couldn't answer it. Then I gave him a triangle and asked for the length of the hypoteneus. He could do it. But he wasn't able to integrate the two ideas together until I manually showed him how. I remember having the same difficulties myself, a long time ago.
I think as humans, we're just really bad with our internal communication/thought and crossreferencing. It takes a certain degree of feeling like you have "ownership" of an idea, like you are holding it in your hand, and you are going to weild it like a weapon against all the other ideas and situations in the world. "Knowing how to get the length of a hypoteneus, how can we approach the problem of the distance between two points (positions specified by orthogonal vectors)".
I guess the thing is to make sure to ensure that students build a framework of interconnected ideas. I think the constructivist school of thought is a good idea; I wonder if there is a way to teach this a little more explicitly.
I think the worst problem with the way mathematics is taught (either from a teacher, or a book) is the lack of visualization. Indeed, there's an almost religious commitment to rigidity and formalism, when a lot of time, all we need is a little insight, and thenall the symbols will make sense.
Take abstract algebra for instance. It's really arcane and odd; What makes a group? Closure, Associativity, Identity, and Inverses. Most people believe that these things cannot be visualized, and so go on and on with really abstract lines like (AB)C=A(BC), eA=Ae=e, A(-A)=e, etc., etc.,. But these things *CAN* be easily visualized, it just takes the slightest bit of creativity. It's easy to teach these things with pictures, where you're just interfacing with people's intuitive understanding, rather than trying to go through a difficult semantics/symbol layer.
I've taught young kids how to identify groups (think abelian); It's really not a problem, provided you have their attention.
David Brin was right; the cameras are coming. Make sure that we can watch our leaders and police as easily as they can watch us.
There is more insightfulness and depth in a single Clamp story than there is in all of Evangelion put together.
The only thing more boring than Evangelion is Dragon Ball Z. At least Evangelion has Asuka.
Let me plagerize, and save y'all $350 worth of videos. The plot follows:
Gendo is my father. MY NAME IS SHINJI AND I SUCK! Asuka: Yes, you do suck, Shinji! Rei: She's right, Shinji. You suck. Hoji: YEAH! You suck! Unit-00: You suck. NERV Agent: YOU SUCK, SHINJI!(There used to be a "thumbnail evangelion archive", but I can't find it. Anyone know the link?)
...with something more to your liking:
Note: This is a shameless parody of... Some Site, and is not a statement from Ximian, or any other company. How's that? Is that silly enough?
I like the penguin. =^_^= It's cute. Bonobo are cool.
What kind of game are you working on?
I've been playing with SDL on and off for about a year and a half now. Long ago, I wrote a VisualC-SDL intro, and submitted a bug fix. I've worked on BumpRace, and am working on a game that I plan to port from ClanLib to SDL soon, just to chop the dependencies down and ditch C++.
It sounds like you are talking about a home game programming project. If that's the case, then SDL should more than meet your need. In my experience, home game programmers tend to dramatically over-estimate their performance needs. Focus more on making your game do something interesting first.
I don't meant to say SDL doesn't perform well; Hyperion ported Shogo to Linux using SDL (so, yes, companies other than Loki commercially using it), and Loki ported Tribes 2 and a zillion other games to Linux with SDL...
As for the user community for SDL; it's huge, and quite friendly. There are a lot of projects out there that build on SDL, and there are bindings for Python, Perl, and many other languages. (For casual readers: SDL itself is in C.)
I really don't know what more you could ask for, except for it to become the world standard and have a dedicated hotline for support (DirectX). Other than that, it's all pretty much there.
I've had one opportunity to pair code in my life, and I wish I had more, becase from what I've seen, pair coding is the quickest ticket to the Zone.
You may be thinking, "What if I get stuck with Mihoshi. I'm a great coder, what if I get stuck with that jerk down the hall. I'm going to be doing all the work, and that guy down the hall's just going to be bothering me."
[shrug] It's a possibility. What I found, though, was that having another person with me was terribly concentrating, and it was like having laser attention. We'd come up with things that the other hadn't come up with, and it was easy to stay on target. Now I'm single programming, and I get distracted a lot. Sure, there's the occasional Zone time, but I don't know many people who can [alone] maintain Zone for prolonged periods of time.
I'm looking forward to pair programming again.
RoleModel SofTware has been doing XP for a while, and writing a lot about it.
In addition to all of their stuff about their experience with XP, be sure to read their paper about Apprenticeship as an educational method..
I dislike that you have to be a Christian to work for RoleModel SofTware, but I like that they stand by their ethical values. I'd love to work for a company that had a pervading "ethics first" principal.
by Richard Stallman
Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible -- just enough to cover the cost.
Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can. If this seems surprising to you, please read on.
The word ``free'' has two legitimate general meanings; it can refer either to freedom or to price. When we speak of ``free software'', we're talking about freedom, not price. (Think of ``free speech'', not ``free beer''.) Specifically, it means that a user is free to run the program, change the program, and redistribute the program with or without changes.
Free programs are sometimes distributed gratis, and sometimes for a substantial price. Often the same program is available in both ways from different places. The program is free regardless of the price, because users have freedom in using it.
Non-free programs are usually sold for a high price, but sometimes a store will give you a copy at no charge. That doesn't make it free software, though. Price or no price, the program is non-free because users don't have freedom.
Since free software is not a matter of price, a low price isn't more free, or closer to free. So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it.
Free software is a community project, and everyone who depends on it ought to look for ways to contribute to building the community. For a distributor, the way to do this is to give a part of the profit to the Free Software Foundation or some other free software development project. By funding development, you can advance the world of free software.
Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development. Don't waste it!
In order to contribute funds, you need to have some extra. If you charge too low a fee, you won't have anything to spare to support development.
Will a higher distribution price hurt some users?
People sometimes worry that a high distribution fee will put free software out of range for users who don't have a lot of money. With proprietary software (18k characters), a high price does exactly that -- but free software is different.
The difference is that free software naturally tends to spread around, and there are many ways to get it.
Software hoarders try their damnedest to stop you from running a proprietary program without paying the standard price. If this price is high, that does make it hard for some users to use the program.
With free software, users don't have to pay the distribution fee in order to use the software. They can copy the program from a friend who has a copy, or with the help of a friend who has network access. Or several users can join together, split the price of one CD-ROM, then each in turn can install the software. A high CD-ROM price is not a major obstacle when the software is free.
Will a higher distribution price discourage use of free software?
Another common concern is for the popularity of free software. People think that a high price for distribution would reduce the number of users, or that a low price is likely to encourage users.
This is true for proprietary software -- but free software is different. With so many ways to get copies, the price of distribution service has less effect on popularity.
In the long run, how many people use free software is determined mainly by how much free software can do, and how easy it is to use. Many users will continue to use proprietary software if free software can't do all the jobs they want to do. Thus, if we want to increase the number of users in the long run, we should above all develop more free software.
The most direct way to do this is by writing needed free software or manuals yourself. But if you do distribution rather than writing, the best way you can help is by raising funds for others to write them.
The term ``selling software'' can be confusing too
Strictly speaking, ``selling'' means trading goods for money. Selling a copy of a free program is legitimate, and we encourage it.
However, when people think of ``selling software'', they usually imagine doing it the way most companies do it: making the software proprietary rather than free.
So unless you're going to draw distinctions carefully, the way this article does, we suggest it is better to avoid using the term ``selling software'' and choose some other wording instead. For example, you could say ``distributing free software for a fee''--that is unambiguous.
High or low fees, and the GNU GPL
Except for one special situation, the GNU General Public License (20k characters) (GNU GPL) has no requirements about how much you can charge for distributing a copy of free software. You can charge nothing, a penny, a dollar, or a billion dollars. It's up to you, and the marketplace, so don't complain to us if nobody wants to pay a billion dollars for a copy.
The one exception is in the case where binaries are distributed without the corresponding complete source code. Those who do this are required by the GNU GPL to provide source code on subsequent request. Without a limit on the fee for the source code, they would be able set a fee too large for anyone to pay--such as, a billion dollars--and thus pretend to release source code while in truth concealing it. So in this case we have to limit the fee for source, to ensure the user's freedom. In ordinary situations, however, there is no such justification for limiting distribution fees, so we do not limit them.
Sometimes companies whose activities cross the line of what the GNU GPL permits plead for permission, saying that they ``won't charge money for the GNU software'' or such like. They don't get anywhere this way. Free software is about freedom, and enforcing the GPL is defending freedom. When we defend users' freedom, we are not distracted by side issues such as how much of a distribution fee is charged. Freedom is the issue, the whole issue, and the only issue.
Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
Updated: 5 Oct 2000 taz
Thank you for the news, and good luck on your Nautilus development.
This is what is really heartening about the Free Software/Open Source movement- People really care about what they are doing.
It's an extremely valuable (economically, and personally) thing.
We structure our world capitalistically so that we can channel selfish motives. But the really successful ventures will also channel benelevolence. Thank you.
...a benefactor system, like arstechnica has.
Yes, I have found that I have donated far more than I ever have in the past. This year, so far, I have donated $300.00, and plan to get to $1,200 by the end of the year. I have never donated in the past.
I blame PayPal. {;D}=
Luckily, the site you linked to didn't support PayPal; I'd be out another $5.00 if they did..!
What I have discovered, is that when you donate to projects, you give them much more than the little money you give them. That little bit of money allows them to do a whole lot more work.
Let's suppose someone has put 100 hours of work of their personal time into a project, but they're stuck now. They need $250.00 for some task. I don't know, web hosting for a year, or something like that. They've reached a wall, in terms of how much further they can go. When you pay that $250.00, not only are you paying for just removing that wall, but you are also getting a boatload of free work out of them! They may put in another 100 hours of work and enthusiasm, from your $250. If there were no obstacles, you just paid someone 2.50 an hour for a cause that you really believe in, and everyone's happy with it. I strongly believe that online donations are going to make the world a significantly better place.
I'm going to friggen hang myself because the best comics in the world are being ignored in favor of Pokey.
Alas, cruel Slashdot, I knew you well.
Whatever.
Augggghghhghghgh! I'm SUFFERING!!!
I should have included this with the last email... These are awesome links.
First, some from electric sheep, a very socially conscious, interesting, and humerous collection of comics.
Here are two Scott McCloud links. Scott McClouds greatest works, unfortunately, are not online: Understanding Comics, and Reinventing Comics. Get them at a comic store near you, or at BarnesAndNoble.com. Here's some of his online work, which are of exceptional quality:
Finally, Unicorn Jelly, for those who love science, mathematics, and anime. Be sure to check out the alternative time lines, and the powers of ten map of the universe of tryslmaistan.
I have a hard time respecting an article on web based comics that doesn't even mention the work of Scott McCloud, easily the person who has put the most thought and effort into the web as a medium for comics..!
Go check out Scott McCloud at once. The article we just read is under-researched.
I recently realized that, with the exception of Final Fantasy 9 (which is more of a story), I haven't played any games in a long time. "What am I doing?" I thought. I then realized that I was playing games, just other types of games: How can I help the Free Software movement, How can I maximize my contribution to society and self, how can I promote, learn about, and work on, groupware. Learning is also another type of game, that I play.
What's common to games? I liked the definition I read on the WorldForge project page: You've got a goal, you've got obstructions, and you try to meet the goal through the obstructions. And, that description matches the games that I play, video-game or otherwise (contributing, learning, etc.,.).
Now the question is: What seperates a game from Work? The description above seems to also describe work rather well. Almost by definition, I hate work, but I love games (Cosmic Encounters, for name-dropping). So what's the difference? For this, I draw on Taoism, that book "Flow" (John Carmak recently referenced it), and Miyamoto-sama, who emphatically repeated at GDC 1999 that the game-playing experience must be "comfortable". Perhaps the only difference between work and a game is that the game is comfortable, whereas the game is, well,... Work. I'm still working on this definition. (Mary Poppins said that with a spoonful of sugar, you just snap, and the job's a game. While I like this idea, I have trouble in the impementation; perhaps I'm just not snapping my fingers correctly. Maybe I need to meditate more.)
Given this description, what are the types of games that I'm interested in playing? Personally, I'm really interested in games that cross-over into the domain of my livelihood, and the livelihood of others around me. I'd like the principle of game-ness to shove out work-ness from my life. I wouldn't fret if work completely disappeared from my life. Computers fit the bill rather well. I've always considered the operation of computers to be something of a game, since I was a wee little one, and I've always had an intuition that it would pay the bills. (That intuition turned out to be right.) But still, there's a lot that's uncomfortable about it. It's just like when you're in the maze, and all the doors are locked, and there isn't a key in sight. You're absolutely stuck. You were slated to finish a programming task in 2 days, and it's taken you 2 WEEKS, and you still don't know how you're going to get out of it. This is an uncomfortable situation, and draws me out of the realm of the game, into the realm of work. Ugh. And I was trying so hard to get out of that realm. Where am I going with all of this? Well, I'm trying to establish the similarities and subtle differences between work and games, and then I'm trying to segue into how I think that we can structure things so that work can become more like a game. My ultimate goal is to get feedback from you, build interest in the subject, and have you send me links and other references to related lines of thought.
So, I've found this neat way of teaching that can make a game out of learning. It gives you immediate positive rewards, it helps out in the world (because you learn a valuable skill), and you don't get stuck with no keys and lots of locked doors, because it has a built in help line, that you can call on and get a quick piece of help.
The way I found I learned from Philip Greenspun. He uses problems and a community system as integral parts of the ArsDigita training program. It works like this: You have a number of problems, in gradually increasing difficulty, that the learner tackles. Lecture is rather secondary to the problem statements themselves. Lecture is useful, in so much as it helps with the problems. The problems are rather UNIX-like in that the goal is to teach the student one thing, and teach it well. Anyways, I've been working on installing the ACS, and it's been going well so far. Whenever I have a problem, I go to the web bulliten board, search for the problem. Most likely someone had it before, and I get the answer there. If not, I write an entry to the list, and within 5-15 minutes, get a reply. (Once I had to wait 6 hours, though...) The reply then goes on to the board, so that others can get the solution as well. In fact, it's like this with most of our online systems, except that the response time isn't as small, you have to sort through google entries, and usually you have to subscribe/unsubscribe to/from mailing lists, etc., etc.,.
Anyways, I've tried out the method of problem guides in the Fledging Unix Programmers class that I teach, and it's had excellent results. Problems show up when the difficulty between problems is too high, so I subdivide those intervals. It works great.
But what I'm really looking for is for other people to do the same thing.. There are a lot of times in my life where I have 2-3 hours spare, and I'd like to play a game in that time. I'd like a good set of 3-5 problems, workable within 2 hours total, that increase my knowledge about the Linux Kernel, PHP, How to use databases, link things up, make a small game, play with networking, etc., whatever. Do you know what I mean? (Please answer.) So what I'd like to have is, not so much HOW-TO's, but PROBLEM-GUIDE's. And support lines consisting of other people who are interested in the subject, and have completed the guides themselves. Well balanced problem guides. That way, I can play games on a daily basis that are comfortable, educational, and most importantly, fun.
Free Software and OpenSource Software wouldn't be anywhere near where it is today were it not for the Internet. The only reason Linux progresses as it has, I believe, is because we've had the Internet. It just wouldn't work with people mailing each other back and forth.
I believe that the next big steps in communication will come through groupware, and that groupware is the #1 thing that we can invest our time and energy in to, to receive maximal payback in the form of OpenSource and Free Software.
It needs to be dirt simple for us to create and destroy projects, set up mailing lists, votes, build databases collaboratively, vote, instant message, chat, etc., etc. When it's fluid, we'll reach a new level of community building and communication, which will redouble our ability to work over the Internet with one another.
We need to be able to easily embed groupware into our standard applications. It needs to be easy for a user to look something up in the documentation, note a minor bug, (spelling error? incompleteness? technical error?) make the adjustement, have the adjustment sent and approved by a moderator, and then applied to the text. All software should be able to easily manage docs like this.
We need to be able to say, "I need help," after looking through the docs, flag our ICQ or IM or whatever as "I am someone who needs help using THIS tool," and someone from the dev mailing list for that tool who has the "I am someone who can help you with THIS tool" flag set put in contact with you. It needs to be seamless, it needs to be easy, and it needs to be ubiquitous.
Another breakthrough will arrive when we can seamlessly communicate with audio-video over the web, between countries, and hold group meetings over the web.
Whenever you want to learn something, someone will be ready to teach you, face to monitor to camera to face.
Again, I think that the best thing you could work on if you want to improve OpenSource and Free Software is GroupWare.
The major changes we've seen coming from Open Source and Free Software are just the tip of the iceberg, and I think it's something that we should all be excited about and proud of.
Dear Friend ; Especially for you - this red-hot announcement . This is a one time mailing there is no need to request removal if you won't want any more . This mail is being sent in compliance with Senate bill 2216 , Title 9 ; Section 303 ! THIS IS NOT A GET RICH SCHEME . Why work for somebody else when you can become rich as few as 43 weeks . Have you ever noticed most everyone has a cellphone and society seems to be moving faster and faster . Well, now is your chance to capitalize on this . We will help you sell more and SELL MORE . You are guaranteed to succeed because we take all the risk ! But don't believe us . Ms Jones of Washington tried us and says "My only problem now is where to park all my cars" . This offer is 100% legal . We beseech you - act now ! Sign up a friend and you'll get a discount of 10% ! Thank-you for your serious consideration of our offer ! Dear Friend ; This letter was specially selected to be sent to you ! If you no longer wish to receive our publications simply reply with a Subject: of "REMOVE" and you will immediately be removed from our directory . This mail is being sent in compliance with Senate bill 1626 , Title 8 , Section 305 ! This is NOT unsolicited bulk mail ! Why work for somebody else when you can become rich inside 49 DAYS ! Have you ever noticed most everyone has a cellphone plus nearly every commercial on television has a .com on
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Genetic testing has determined insurance for a long time.
Consider this: I'm an XY. I have to pay vastly larger amounts on my car insurance than I would have to if my DNA had an XX shape.
We've been doing this for a long time...
There's a screenshot of the right-to-left capabilities of Pango on their web page.
Specifically, Hebrew and Arabic text, right-to-left, appear in the middle of the document.
Tamagotchi is about as positive-sum as it gets.
Bucky invented a game called "World Game" which has the intent of enabling people to envision a positive-sum world.
Visit ArsDigita to download the ArsDigita Community System ¥ACS, a completely Open Source set of tools for building online collaborative communities© Go to the education section for help©
Also, read Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing© If you are serious about online community development, this is required reading© I have never seen a better work on online community development©
I've reviewed the book at The Assayer©