The GPL zealots will call this astroturf simply because it makes claims that they don't want to hear; namely that there genuinely are some people in the world who don't want Richard Stallman making decisions for them.
You can say whatever you like; the reality is that version 3 of the GPL genuinely is enormously unpopular. I didn't need this survey to tell me that.
Just because you yourselves might worship Stallman as God, it doesn't mean that he genuinely is. What that also means is that if he tries to do things which the majority do not want, he ultimately will not be able to.
Another "sequel" which in reality is a glorified graphics patch.
Blizzard are well on their way to becoming the next Electronic Arts. The WoW zeppelin has an engine on fire and is fairly clearly losing altitude, and now we find out that SC 2 is going to be more of the same. Most of the creative team behind both the Diablo franchise and WoW itself are apparently long gone for greener pastures, and the company's unholy corporate matrimony with Vivendi is old news.
Everything has a shelf life, I guess. The interesting thing is going to be seeing how long the corpse keeps kicking.
You gave us some great games, Blizz. Rest in peace.
...that having your character die while in the Wailing Caverns is actually a traumatic experience, because you are then abruptly thrust back out into the discordian maelstrom that is Barrens general chat. It's an experience that I've likened to suddenly and rapidly having your head plunged into a bucket of refrigerated vomit.
There are two issues in TFA. One of them is language, and I think referring to WoW is really disingenuous because it comes with a built in profanity filter which is surprisingly effective and its turned on by default.
As I've already written, WoW's single main problem is terminal elitism. Profanity isn't something that I anyway have ever considered a problem.
You're exactly the kind of person who I was talking about in 4). I'm not surprised you were unable to consciously identify yourself as such. Fear-based zealotry and self-awareness rarely go hand in hand.
World of Warcraft's forums have always been as vicious as the fairly high level of censorship will allow, but they have been getting worse recently.
There are five main areas where a chronic degree of player elitism, and other player attitude problems are (at least sociologically speaking) slowly destroying World of Warcraft.
1) If you don't have at least one, and preferably multiple level 70 characters, you're not acknowledged as a player of the game at all, culturally speaking. You're not considered credible in the area of forming a guild, even if you only intend it to be informal or for low level members, or have someone else to mentor you.
2) For those who don't know, every character class in the game has three talent or sub-discipline trees, where as players progress they can add points to specific talents within each sub-discipline tree, in order to gain bonuses or new abilities within that sub-discipline. There is an endemic attitude among end-game players that, at least in the case of some classes, only one (or at most two) of these three talent trees is in any way valid or legitimate. Players (such as myself) who create characters that specialise in the politically incorrect talent tree/s are vilified as ignorant, and told that they will not be accepted to participate in the supposedly all-important activity of end-game raiding. Peer pressure is used as a means of enforcing these biases.
3) There is a mentality among level 70 players that end-game raiding is the only thing in the game that is worth doing; if you're not raiding yourself, you are not considered to be engaging in any other legitimate form of activity.
4) There is an overwhelming tendency among players who are ignorant of the mechanics of their given character class, and who are performing poorly in the game, to enter the forums and attempt to complain to Blizzard employees that the character class in question is "broken" and needs to be "fixed" in the ways that they specify, rather than said players engaging in the requisite research/other effort necessary to learn how to be genuinely effective with their character class within the game environment. This is predictably more true in the case of hybrid classes such as the Hunter and Shaman than others, because in the case of these classes, their purpose within a multidisciplinary player group is not as immediately apparent as is the case of more single-purpose classes, such as the Warrior or Mage.
5) As far as the playerbase is concerned, The Burning Crusade expansion has been an unmitigated disaster. Since the expansion's release, player emphasis has been almost purely on competition and rivalry, rather than earlier forms of camaraderie and positive interaction. People in the game are less likely to help each other now to a large degree; it's become a lot more about how far ahead of the other person you can get. Blizzard themselves are responsible for other extremely detrimental changes that occurred just prior to the release of the expansion, namely the almost complete destruction of the in-game UI customisation and scripting system, and the abolition of the earlier pvp ranking system, which had also created a scenario where players had a concrete incentive for wanting to win games within the pvp battlegrounds.
Nobody worships Linus, or IBM, or Sun. WTF is up with this incindiary prose?
I notice that one of the people you *don't* mention in the above is Richard Stallman. I'm assuming that's because you're also aware that unlike the above, he *is* a cult leader.
...I strongly advocate starting your own project from scratch, rather than going anywhere near pre-existing code to the degree that you can help it. Do not listen to the brainless lemmings who screech and whine about "duplication of effort." If it's *your* effort that we're talking about, you have every right to tell them to leave you alone.
There are a number of reasons why starting from scratch can be a good idea:-
1) You'll have a codebase which you'll understand, rather than having to try and comprehend someone else's, which is the product of a brain and a range of experience other than your own.
2) You can be sure said codebase works, because you'll have been able to do your own testing, overseen by you.
3) Often earlier implementations of a particular idea will be written in a technically inferior, less stable, less secure way. This is very often the case with the "Linux must at all costs be an imitation of Windows" crowd in particular. The old saying that if you want something done right, to do it yourself, is even more true in the case of FOSS than in most other areas.
4) (This is probably the single most important one) If your project runs on Linux and becomes popular, sooner or later the GNU zealots will come to call. These are people who are very anxious to make sure that you're "giving back to the community," and that you aren't "taking advantage of your suppliers for your own gain." They do this primarily because they seek justification for being able to dominate others. Starting your own codebase means that you will have the right to experience the intense pleasure and satisfaction that may come from demanding that these individuals commit suicide, preferably in the most agonising way possible, at the earliest possible opportunity. If you start your own codebase, you don't owe anyone else anything, and you can tell the zealots that. The detestable, leftist zealotry exhibited by the reciprocity police is one of the strongest arguments against the re-use of open source code in new development projects. If you don't use anyone else's code, you can make sure that you are able to avoid the above...and to me, this reason alone is justification for starting your own projects when you write more or less anything. Even if you're not using anyone else's code, the zealots may well try to pressure you into adopting the GPL if you're using another license. Express to them an earnest desire that they cease to exist, say it loudly and adamantly, and repeat it as many times as is necessary for them to eventually listen and leave you in peace.
I'm not trying to troll either...but here's a question for you.
Let's say, purely for the sake of hypothetical argument, that wonderful things like this are not merely schizophrenic conspiracist fantasy.
Let's also say, again purely for the sake of hypothetical argument, that once both this ID card becomes a reality and these facilities are operational and accepting large swathes of the American population, a law is passed which says that the penalty for not having a valid ID card at any time and for any reason is to be immediately sent to one of these facilities.
Now let's also say, again for the sake of argument, that there's a hard drive crash one night within whatever facility is housing your state's records for the ID cards, including the stuff about whose cards in that state are valid at any given point in time.
In this hypothetical scenario, let's also say as a final point that it just so happens that the very next day a conscientious local police officer stops you on the way home from work and asks to see your ID card. He can decide you look suspicious for whatever reason he wants; he doesn't even need one. Because of the disk crash at the database housing facility the previous night however, the status of your ID card comes up indeterminate when it is scanned. Since the status of your card cannot be determined, it is assumed that you're fairly obviously either a terrorist or an illegal alien. The cop decides (and it could literally have been decided by a coin toss) to go for the first option, and since other legislation has also been passed recently that enemy combatants can be processed immediately, without charge or trial, (since they obviously represent such a grave risk to national security) you get shipped off to one of the camps within 24 hours.
At that point, you officially do not exist. You're a non-entity, and as such, you don't even legally have the right to exist at all. Family members or anyone else who might want to know what has happened to you are legally strictly forbidden from finding out, and anyone who tries will merely end up in a similar facility themselves.
So...you arrive, you're stripped of your old clothing, head shaved, and subdermally chipped. They're not really too worried about anyone escaping, but it's better not to take chances, so the chip is a good form of insurance. If the people who've received you take the terrorist charge seriously, or even if they merely feel like it, you might also be tortured as well. A traditionalist among the guards might want to go for the usual cranial water immersion, or maybe they've been developing something novel recently which they want to try out on you, just for kicks. Maybe the guards at your particular facility have a penchant for the classics; slowly dripping water on the head, use of red-hot iron, or nails slowly driven through your hands and feet. You might even be lucky enough to have a doctor there who's working on an unorthodox form of electroshock treatment, and needs a new test subject after the last one died.
After the reception committee gets finished with you, you find yourself in a communal dirt-floor storage room, (dormitory would be way too mild a word) lying on one of what almost seems like a stack of wood bunks. This isn't because they knew that solitary was rougher on the inmates at all, mind you...it's just that creating solitary cells actually takes up more space, and there are going to be so many similar undesirables needing to come in that they need to pack as many human beings into as small a space as possible. You're initially nervous, but after a while you realise there's nothing to fear from your fellow inmates; most of them have been recently tortured themselves, and that has taken any energy they might have had for fighting. You can hear a brief period of crying, some wailing, or some low moans occasionally, but apart from that there is nothing to break the silence. After a few months you'll learn to
Email the department of homeland security so I can volunteer to be put in their database of accidental persecution.... I don't even feel comfortable typing their name.
It's going to get a lot more uncomfortable than it is even now once the internment camps activate and start accepting people for "processing." I'm expecting that that will happen at some point next year. The furor about illegal immigrants is being used as justification for the opening of the camps...but what are people going to say when entirely legal, naturalised Americans start ending up in the camps alongside the supposed illegals?
...is that the movie industry seems to be of the deluded opinion that the regurgitated garbage it's shovelling these days is actually worth pirating.
The last film I saw which I actually considered worth seeing was Batman Begins, and even that was still an unofficial sequel. (Or prequel, if you want to split hairs)
That however is all the movie industry is doing now...remake after sequel after sequel after remake. There is absolutely nothing of any originality whatsoever being produced, and there hasn't been on a consistent basis for probably at least 10 years now.
Maybe that however is the industry's ingenious plan to stop film piracy; flood the market with crap to the point where nobody *wants* to pirate it. The only problem with that idea is that people will stop wanting to pay to watch what is being produced as well.
Like it or loathe it, that's why the GPL is such a fair license. Developers, whether individuals or large corporations, are compelled to put any code contributions back into the project for the benefit of everyone else. In essence, everyone gets paid in kind by the contribution of code which dramatically increases the quality of the project over time, and the ability to use the software for free.
Interesting. I wonder how it is then that the BSDs are able to continue to exist, if these benefits are conferred by the GPL alone? Obviously legal compulsion to reciprocate perhaps isn't as essential as you might think.
Are you yet another victim of Stallmanite mind control, or are you just doing a really convincing job of sounding like it?
Until that wonderful utopian time, I find the idea that my highly skilled and productive work should benefit those who see me as an interchangeable part with someone in a third world nation, and benefit them for "free", no less, to be highly distasteful.
I agree. This is who we have to thank for said highly distasteful idea, too...along with a few others.
After all, as everyone knows, the archetypal Linux developer is a rabid anarcho-communist; usually modelled after the prototype, Richard Stallman.
You also cannot, without deservedly being labelled a hypocrite, have it both ways. I'm aware that BS rationalisations have existed historically for Commies having/making money such as "we're using the system in order to bring about its' downfall," but let us - for once - be honest here. The topic of making money with Linux has always been governed by the old Stalinist adage that all are equal, but some are more equal than others. Hence the justification behind it being perfectly acceptable for the FSF to accept donations, while at the same time Stallman condemns programmers practicing their art for money. We also have a scenario where putting a copy of Linux on a CD and attaching a price to it is seen as the most heinous, unspeakable form of evil imaginable, and yet every one of the development hosting sites in existence have mechanisms that allow their hosted projects to electronically beg for alms.
If anyone who's ever read anything I've written here has wondered why I think Stallman and his philosophy are both such a virulently toxic memetic disease, the above cognitive dissonance should hopefully provide a potent example. Such thinking originated with him, and is propogated by him and his followers.
Here's an idea that, unlike the usual Commie rhetoric attached to this subject, is genuinely revolutionary:- What about getting rid of the taboo on making money with Linux? The fact that there is so much stigma attached to it tells me that most of the people who propogate this geas aren't actually programmers themselves...because if they were, I'm assuming they wouldn't want there to be a social rule against them doing something they needed to be able to do in order to eat.
It gets really old seeing people back stab each other, and having people share their substance abuse, sexual issues, sick sense of humour or absence there of etc.
Yes, there is a lot of human rubbish in WoW, but given that my background before that was IRC on the Undernet, for me it's a definite improvement.;) 14 year olds bragging about how stoned they are is still a long way from BDSM freaks, demoniacs, and schizophrenics. The Undernet wasn't called the Undernet for nothing.;)
For multimedia *playing*, Linux is mostly there these days, although there are probably people who would even disagree with that assertion.
Saying however that Linux is remotely close to being suitable for people to *produce* multimedia with is almost exactly like saying, "You too can live in the vastness of space! All you need is an oxygen tank and space suit!"
In other words, although it might be entirely inhabitable by the terminally autistic, this is one environment which still requires terraforming on a rather massive scale before it's ready for life as most of the rest of us know it to be able to move in.;)
...but not in terms of what the industry is actually willing to do.
WoW goes about as far as it's possible to go while still having what is very largely a static environment. Blizz are in the process of phasing in what essentially amounts to zone-wide games of domination, (if your faction holds all 3 or 4 castles in the zone at once, all players in your faction get a 5% damage bonus) but that still isn't what a vocal minority of players have expressed that they want.
What I've heard said minority in the playerbase saying it wants in terms of world pvp is a scenario where regions can literally be taken by one side or the other. In other words, although Hillsbrad for example might start out neutral/contested, there could be a scenario where Alliance players could invade it and it could literally become an Alliance zone. At the moment, zone allegiance is static; it never changes.
The problem with this sort of thing however is that there are technical issues with regards to implementing it, and that said technical issues are mostly above the industry's preferred pain threshold; especially considering that they involve introducing things that are radically outside the current paradigm. (At least from what I've seen) The other incentive for Blizzard NOT to introduce such things is that even though some players generally do want them, such players are a tiny minority. Most players are firmly addicted to ovine repetition such that if Blizzard *were* to start introducing genuinely innovative/novel aspects into the game, it'd probably scare the sheep away. That's something Blizz really don't want to do, because given that the sheep are the overwhelming majority, they're also where Blizz consistently will make most of their money.
If you look at the differences between WoW and UO in particular, what sets WoW apart isn't what Blizzard added to the model anywhere near as much as what they took away. UO was a lot more open-ended; yes there were dungeon crawls, but there was also a much more thorough economy, a somewhat more diverse reportoire of trade skills, and there were player created and run towns in some places due to the player real estate. In other words, the game wasn't only about "Go to X location and kill some monsters, or X dungeon and kill some more monsters there, or X set part of the map and kill other players there."
The real problem though, now that I look at it, isn't with the development industry. It's with the players themselves. If WoW has proven anything, it's overwhelmingly that players want an extremely narrow, object-oriented game environment for the most part. They need objectives spelled out for them extremely precisely. Maxis actually found out the same thing with The Sims; most human beings simply don't have the initiative or the intelligence required to set their own objectives within the game environment, but instead require the game designers to do it for them.
So yes...UO in particular and other games as well have showed us that there's a lot more to it than WoW, but what WoW itself and players' response to it has overwhelmingly shown is that neither the design industry nor the playerbase itself for the most part *wants* more. If Blizzard have any overwhelming talent, it is a talent for identifying and isolating those elements of fantasy which the gaming public want, and then regurgitating said elements back to the gaming public in an utterly McDonaldised way. They did this with both D2 and Starcraft as well as WoW. The end result is a game which is massively horizontal, rather than vertical. There's no depth whatsoever; it's based around literally mind-numbing repetition, but even though nearly the only two activities include killing monsters and finding gear with which to kill yet more monsters, the sheer number of different monsters and loot in themselves make the game sufficiently superficiallly interesting that you're able to at least temporarily (depending on your degree of intelligence, which thankfully for Blizzard, is minimal in the ca
1) An open source WoW server emulator. I could do a number of things with that; tweak the AI and make bots for WSG/partying, migrate it to postgresql if that's never been done, (I don't think WoW does run on postgres) and maybe make some new material if I had 3d studio max. Someone else said the Diablo Battle Chest; I'd *maybe* go with D1, but WoW is everything D2 is and more.
2) UT 99 with level editor, and offline copies of this, this, and this site.
3) GTA: San Andreas.
4) Another interesting game-related project if I could learn enough would be a truly decent 3D front end for Nethack. This could possibly serve as a base, but I'd make a lot of graphical alterations.
...that Australia no longer has genuine national sovereignty distinct from America. We haven't been our own people culturally or economically since the 80s, and the free trade agreement coupled with Howard's ongoing earnestness to subjugate himself to the American government as much as possible are just more nails in the coffin.
The fools who were so adamant for Australia's split with the English monarchy now failed to realise one crucial detail; Australia's genuine independence is never going to happen. If we split with England entirely, America will rush in to fill the void before anyone can blink.
For one thing, it talks about a group (copyright abolitionists) that I've never seen any members of. I've heard about people calling for the death of the patent system, and to a degree I agree with that idea, but I've never seen anyone I don't think who wanted to get rid of copyright law entirely.
Although other than in maybe one case, I've never seen any real merit in the GPL myself, either. Yes, yes, I know I'm going to get a horde of the usual Stallmanite morons responding to this; go back to sleep, guys...I don't care. The main reason is that in my mind, your opinion is founded on a) primarily fear, usually of Microsoft, and b) brainwashing, rather than on any real logic whatsoever. I think that is the reason why I don't actually try and argue with Stallman's zealots any more for the most part...mind control isn't something that *can* be argued with logically. Every single time I see any of them post it proves that point, as well...the message is always the same, and always based purely on fear, hate, and a desire to dominate others. It's a fantastic image for newcomers to Linux to be exposed to.
I still feel that non-copyleft licenses are the way to go, because they give you copyright (which *is* different to public domain in my mind) but nothing else. That is the proverbial gift culture; no strings, and no fear.
I've said before that Microsoft could quite viably be charged under RICO for Ballmer's "Nice OS, would be a shame to see anything happen to it," noises towards Linux, and concievably for the Novell deal as well. Protectionism is protectionism, after all.
People can see the Sherman Act as being anticapitalist if they want, but as far as I'm concerned gangsters on the other hand have no place within a principled economic system. If Ballmer is going to insist on continuing to behave like a gangster, then he should by all means be prosecuted as one.
There is no subversion. First, it would require someone to falsely place something into a GPLed work or GPL something that is patented. Novel has never, I repeat never attempted to do this. They have never indicated they would do this. And they have specifically stated they won't do this. Again were is the problem?
Let me paint a picture for you. You've got a group of sheep out grazing in a field somewhere. Then you've got a couple of shepherds. (Perens and Stallman, in the analogy) The shepherds start waving their arms and gesturing for the sheep to move in a particular direction, (in other words, those two express the opinion that the deal is a bad thing) and the sheep promptly do so. Why? Because they're sheep, and they've been trained to both recognise the shepherds, trust the shepherds, and immediately obey every directive that comes from them. Some of the sheep are perhaps a little more stubborn than others, and might resist somewhat...but in that case, more loyal sheep bleat at and butt the stubborn ones with their heads in order to force them to comply.
I understand that you might hope that human beings would be capable of resisting the urge to engage in such blatantly ovine behaviour, but sadly, the Linux community proves more or less on a daily basis that they aren't.
I've talked with perens. He is an idiot. And I mean that personally. I'm assuming the other you name are in the same league.
Bruce's main flaws in my own mind are a rather monumental overestimation of his own influence, and the usual blind, gibbering terror of that supposed antichrist, Steve Ballmer. Personally I think drawing comparisons between Ballmer and Satan involves radically overestimating Ballmer's level of genuine importance.;)
It stretches belief to imagine that Microsoft didn't know they were subverting the essence - if not the letter - of the GPL with this deal.
This also however is precisely the point. The "community" is gradually becoming more and more about vague, unwritten, subjective emotional abstractions than anything near as precise as the letter of the law. For anyone wanting to develop/distribute GPL licensed software now, it's no longer enough to merely fulfill the precise written legal requirements of the license. You also have to subscribe to a whole heap of entirely unwritten, subjective ideological bullshit as well. You're required to be an entirely anticapitalist, rabid Marxist, and to worship Stallman as God. Anything less doesn't cut it.
You can be entirely willing to legally adhere to the license in every respect...but unless you're a fully certified member of the cult, nothing else is going to be good enough.
Needless to say, a great many people in the FOSS world, including RMS, Bruce Perens and a lot of others who know a thing or two about this stuff, have castigated Novell for being remarkably stupid. And a lot of us here on Slashdot agree.
Most of those here who agree are the same tiny group who bash people on blogs and in the comment sections of trade press sites for disagreeing with any element of their programming. They're the same group from whom I strongly suspect originated the harassment of Laura Didio, the recent harassment of Oracle, and a number of other such incidents. It's the sort of thing they do. I've got most of them on my freaks list now; they know exactly who they are. They tend to refer to their intimidatory tactics and attempts to enforce Stallman's mind control as activism.
They generally aren't individuals with a huge amount of capacity for objective thought, putting it delicately, but who simply engage in mindless adulation of Stallman, and accept his every word as law without a micron of critical thought of their own whatsoever...they're complete zombies. They're also terrified of Microsoft beyond any vague semblance of reason, and their motivation for reflexively attacking anybody who disagrees with them primarily consists of said fear.
In other words, mentioning that they agree with a certain perspective does absolutely nothing to validate the logic behind said perspective whatsoever.
Slashdot Mirror
The GPL zealots will call this astroturf simply because it makes claims that they don't want to hear; namely that there genuinely are some people in the world who don't want Richard Stallman making decisions for them.
You can say whatever you like; the reality is that version 3 of the GPL genuinely is enormously unpopular. I didn't need this survey to tell me that.
Just because you yourselves might worship Stallman as God, it doesn't mean that he genuinely is. What that also means is that if he tries to do things which the majority do not want, he ultimately will not be able to.
Another "sequel" which in reality is a glorified graphics patch.
Blizzard are well on their way to becoming the next Electronic Arts. The WoW zeppelin has an engine on fire and is fairly clearly losing altitude, and now we find out that SC 2 is going to be more of the same. Most of the creative team behind both the Diablo franchise and WoW itself are apparently long gone for greener pastures, and the company's unholy corporate matrimony with Vivendi is old news.
Everything has a shelf life, I guess. The interesting thing is going to be seeing how long the corpse keeps kicking.
You gave us some great games, Blizz. Rest in peace.
...that having your character die while in the Wailing Caverns is actually a traumatic experience, because you are then abruptly thrust back out into the discordian maelstrom that is Barrens general chat. It's an experience that I've likened to suddenly and rapidly having your head plunged into a bucket of refrigerated vomit.
There are two issues in TFA. One of them is language, and I think referring to WoW is really disingenuous because it comes with a built in profanity filter which is surprisingly effective and its turned on by default.
As I've already written, WoW's single main problem is terminal elitism. Profanity isn't something that I anyway have ever considered a problem.
You're exactly the kind of person who I was talking about in 4). I'm not surprised you were unable to consciously identify yourself as such. Fear-based zealotry and self-awareness rarely go hand in hand.
World of Warcraft's forums have always been as vicious as the fairly high level of censorship will allow, but they have been getting worse recently.
There are five main areas where a chronic degree of player elitism, and other player attitude problems are (at least sociologically speaking) slowly destroying World of Warcraft.
1) If you don't have at least one, and preferably multiple level 70 characters, you're not acknowledged as a player of the game at all, culturally speaking. You're not considered credible in the area of forming a guild, even if you only intend it to be informal or for low level members, or have someone else to mentor you.
2) For those who don't know, every character class in the game has three talent or sub-discipline trees, where as players progress they can add points to specific talents within each sub-discipline tree, in order to gain bonuses or new abilities within that sub-discipline. There is an endemic attitude among end-game players that, at least in the case of some classes, only one (or at most two) of these three talent trees is in any way valid or legitimate. Players (such as myself) who create characters that specialise in the politically incorrect talent tree/s are vilified as ignorant, and told that they will not be accepted to participate in the supposedly all-important activity of end-game raiding. Peer pressure is used as a means of enforcing these biases.
3) There is a mentality among level 70 players that end-game raiding is the only thing in the game that is worth doing; if you're not raiding yourself, you are not considered to be engaging in any other legitimate form of activity.
4) There is an overwhelming tendency among players who are ignorant of the mechanics of their given character class, and who are performing poorly in the game, to enter the forums and attempt to complain to Blizzard employees that the character class in question is "broken" and needs to be "fixed" in the ways that they specify, rather than said players engaging in the requisite research/other effort necessary to learn how to be genuinely effective with their character class within the game environment. This is predictably more true in the case of hybrid classes such as the Hunter and Shaman than others, because in the case of these classes, their purpose within a multidisciplinary player group is not as immediately apparent as is the case of more single-purpose classes, such as the Warrior or Mage.
5) As far as the playerbase is concerned, The Burning Crusade expansion has been an unmitigated disaster. Since the expansion's release, player emphasis has been almost purely on competition and rivalry, rather than earlier forms of camaraderie and positive interaction. People in the game are less likely to help each other now to a large degree; it's become a lot more about how far ahead of the other person you can get. Blizzard themselves are responsible for other extremely detrimental changes that occurred just prior to the release of the expansion, namely the almost complete destruction of the in-game UI customisation and scripting system, and the abolition of the earlier pvp ranking system, which had also created a scenario where players had a concrete incentive for wanting to win games within the pvp battlegrounds.
Nobody worships Linus, or IBM, or Sun. WTF is up with this incindiary prose?
I notice that one of the people you *don't* mention in the above is Richard Stallman. I'm assuming that's because you're also aware that unlike the above, he *is* a cult leader.
...I strongly advocate starting your own project from scratch, rather than going anywhere near pre-existing code to the degree that you can help it. Do not listen to the brainless lemmings who screech and whine about "duplication of effort." If it's *your* effort that we're talking about, you have every right to tell them to leave you alone.
There are a number of reasons why starting from scratch can be a good idea:-
1) You'll have a codebase which you'll understand, rather than having to try and comprehend someone else's, which is the product of a brain and a range of experience other than your own.
2) You can be sure said codebase works, because you'll have been able to do your own testing, overseen by you.
3) Often earlier implementations of a particular idea will be written in a technically inferior, less stable, less secure way. This is very often the case with the "Linux must at all costs be an imitation of Windows" crowd in particular. The old saying that if you want something done right, to do it yourself, is even more true in the case of FOSS than in most other areas.
4) (This is probably the single most important one) If your project runs on Linux and becomes popular, sooner or later the GNU zealots will come to call. These are people who are very anxious to make sure that you're "giving back to the community," and that you aren't "taking advantage of your suppliers for your own gain." They do this primarily because they seek justification for being able to dominate others. Starting your own codebase means that you will have the right to experience the intense pleasure and satisfaction that may come from demanding that these individuals commit suicide, preferably in the most agonising way possible, at the earliest possible opportunity. If you start your own codebase, you don't owe anyone else anything, and you can tell the zealots that. The detestable, leftist zealotry exhibited by the reciprocity police is one of the strongest arguments against the re-use of open source code in new development projects. If you don't use anyone else's code, you can make sure that you are able to avoid the above...and to me, this reason alone is justification for starting your own projects when you write more or less anything. Even if you're not using anyone else's code, the zealots may well try to pressure you into adopting the GPL if you're using another license. Express to them an earnest desire that they cease to exist, say it loudly and adamantly, and repeat it as many times as is necessary for them to eventually listen and leave you in peace.
I'm not trying to troll either...but here's a question for you.
Let's say, purely for the sake of hypothetical argument, that wonderful things like this are not merely schizophrenic conspiracist fantasy.
Let's also say, again purely for the sake of hypothetical argument, that once both this ID card becomes a reality and these facilities are operational and accepting large swathes of the American population, a law is passed which says that the penalty for not having a valid ID card at any time and for any reason is to be immediately sent to one of these facilities.
Now let's also say, again for the sake of argument, that there's a hard drive crash one night within whatever facility is housing your state's records for the ID cards, including the stuff about whose cards in that state are valid at any given point in time.
In this hypothetical scenario, let's also say as a final point that it just so happens that the very next day a conscientious local police officer stops you on the way home from work and asks to see your ID card. He can decide you look suspicious for whatever reason he wants; he doesn't even need one. Because of the disk crash at the database housing facility the previous night however, the status of your ID card comes up indeterminate when it is scanned. Since the status of your card cannot be determined, it is assumed that you're fairly obviously either a terrorist or an illegal alien. The cop decides (and it could literally have been decided by a coin toss) to go for the first option, and since other legislation has also been passed recently that enemy combatants can be processed immediately, without charge or trial, (since they obviously represent such a grave risk to national security) you get shipped off to one of the camps within 24 hours.
At that point, you officially do not exist. You're a non-entity, and as such, you don't even legally have the right to exist at all. Family members or anyone else who might want to know what has happened to you are legally strictly forbidden from finding out, and anyone who tries will merely end up in a similar facility themselves.
So...you arrive, you're stripped of your old clothing, head shaved, and subdermally chipped. They're not really too worried about anyone escaping, but it's better not to take chances, so the chip is a good form of insurance. If the people who've received you take the terrorist charge seriously, or even if they merely feel like it, you might also be tortured as well. A traditionalist among the guards might want to go for the usual cranial water immersion, or maybe they've been developing something novel recently which they want to try out on you, just for kicks. Maybe the guards at your particular facility have a penchant for the classics; slowly dripping water on the head, use of red-hot iron, or nails slowly driven through your hands and feet. You might even be lucky enough to have a doctor there who's working on an unorthodox form of electroshock treatment, and needs a new test subject after the last one died.
After the reception committee gets finished with you, you find yourself in a communal dirt-floor storage room, (dormitory would be way too mild a word) lying on one of what almost seems like a stack of wood bunks. This isn't because they knew that solitary was rougher on the inmates at all, mind you...it's just that creating solitary cells actually takes up more space, and there are going to be so many similar undesirables needing to come in that they need to pack as many human beings into as small a space as possible. You're initially nervous, but after a while you realise there's nothing to fear from your fellow inmates; most of them have been recently tortured themselves, and that has taken any energy they might have had for fighting. You can hear a brief period of crying, some wailing, or some low moans occasionally, but apart from that there is nothing to break the silence. After a few months you'll learn to
Email the department of homeland security so I can volunteer to be put in their database of accidental persecution.... I don't even feel comfortable typing their name.
It's going to get a lot more uncomfortable than it is even now once the internment camps activate and start accepting people for "processing." I'm expecting that that will happen at some point next year. The furor about illegal immigrants is being used as justification for the opening of the camps...but what are people going to say when entirely legal, naturalised Americans start ending up in the camps alongside the supposed illegals?
...is that the movie industry seems to be of the deluded opinion that the regurgitated garbage it's shovelling these days is actually worth pirating.
The last film I saw which I actually considered worth seeing was Batman Begins, and even that was still an unofficial sequel. (Or prequel, if you want to split hairs)
That however is all the movie industry is doing now...remake after sequel after sequel after remake. There is absolutely nothing of any originality whatsoever being produced, and there hasn't been on a consistent basis for probably at least 10 years now.
Maybe that however is the industry's ingenious plan to stop film piracy; flood the market with crap to the point where nobody *wants* to pirate it. The only problem with that idea is that people will stop wanting to pay to watch what is being produced as well.
Like it or loathe it, that's why the GPL is such a fair license. Developers, whether individuals or large corporations, are compelled to put any code contributions back into the project for the benefit of everyone else. In essence, everyone gets paid in kind by the contribution of code which dramatically increases the quality of the project over time, and the ability to use the software for free.
Interesting. I wonder how it is then that the BSDs are able to continue to exist, if these benefits are conferred by the GPL alone? Obviously legal compulsion to reciprocate perhaps isn't as essential as you might think.
Are you yet another victim of Stallmanite mind control, or are you just doing a really convincing job of sounding like it?
I think most programmers that write Free Software do so becuase the like to.
Here's a question...are you one of said programmers yourself?
Until that wonderful utopian time, I find the idea that my highly skilled and productive work should benefit those who see me as an interchangeable part with someone in a third world nation, and benefit them for "free", no less, to be highly distasteful.
I agree. This is who we have to thank for said highly distasteful idea, too...along with a few others.
After all, as everyone knows, the archetypal Linux developer is a rabid anarcho-communist; usually modelled after the prototype, Richard Stallman.
You also cannot, without deservedly being labelled a hypocrite, have it both ways. I'm aware that BS rationalisations have existed historically for Commies having/making money such as "we're using the system in order to bring about its' downfall," but let us - for once - be honest here. The topic of making money with Linux has always been governed by the old Stalinist adage that all are equal, but some are more equal than others. Hence the justification behind it being perfectly acceptable for the FSF to accept donations, while at the same time Stallman condemns programmers practicing their art for money. We also have a scenario where putting a copy of Linux on a CD and attaching a price to it is seen as the most heinous, unspeakable form of evil imaginable, and yet every one of the development hosting sites in existence have mechanisms that allow their hosted projects to electronically beg for alms.
If anyone who's ever read anything I've written here has wondered why I think Stallman and his philosophy are both such a virulently toxic memetic disease, the above cognitive dissonance should hopefully provide a potent example. Such thinking originated with him, and is propogated by him and his followers.
Here's an idea that, unlike the usual Commie rhetoric attached to this subject, is genuinely revolutionary:- What about getting rid of the taboo on making money with Linux? The fact that there is so much stigma attached to it tells me that most of the people who propogate this geas aren't actually programmers themselves...because if they were, I'm assuming they wouldn't want there to be a social rule against them doing something they needed to be able to do in order to eat.
It gets really old seeing people back stab each other, and having people share their substance abuse, sexual issues, sick sense of humour or absence there of etc.
;) 14 year olds bragging about how stoned they are is still a long way from BDSM freaks, demoniacs, and schizophrenics. The Undernet wasn't called the Undernet for nothing. ;)
Yes, there is a lot of human rubbish in WoW, but given that my background before that was IRC on the Undernet, for me it's a definite improvement.
For multimedia *playing*, Linux is mostly there these days, although there are probably people who would even disagree with that assertion.
;)
Saying however that Linux is remotely close to being suitable for people to *produce* multimedia with is almost exactly like saying, "You too can live in the vastness of space! All you need is an oxygen tank and space suit!"
In other words, although it might be entirely inhabitable by the terminally autistic, this is one environment which still requires terraforming on a rather massive scale before it's ready for life as most of the rest of us know it to be able to move in.
...but not in terms of what the industry is actually willing to do.
WoW goes about as far as it's possible to go while still having what is very largely a static environment. Blizz are in the process of phasing in what essentially amounts to zone-wide games of domination, (if your faction holds all 3 or 4 castles in the zone at once, all players in your faction get a 5% damage bonus) but that still isn't what a vocal minority of players have expressed that they want.
What I've heard said minority in the playerbase saying it wants in terms of world pvp is a scenario where regions can literally be taken by one side or the other. In other words, although Hillsbrad for example might start out neutral/contested, there could be a scenario where Alliance players could invade it and it could literally become an Alliance zone. At the moment, zone allegiance is static; it never changes.
The problem with this sort of thing however is that there are technical issues with regards to implementing it, and that said technical issues are mostly above the industry's preferred pain threshold; especially considering that they involve introducing things that are radically outside the current paradigm. (At least from what I've seen) The other incentive for Blizzard NOT to introduce such things is that even though some players generally do want them, such players are a tiny minority. Most players are firmly addicted to ovine repetition such that if Blizzard *were* to start introducing genuinely innovative/novel aspects into the game, it'd probably scare the sheep away. That's something Blizz really don't want to do, because given that the sheep are the overwhelming majority, they're also where Blizz consistently will make most of their money.
If you look at the differences between WoW and UO in particular, what sets WoW apart isn't what Blizzard added to the model anywhere near as much as what they took away. UO was a lot more open-ended; yes there were dungeon crawls, but there was also a much more thorough economy, a somewhat more diverse reportoire of trade skills, and there were player created and run towns in some places due to the player real estate. In other words, the game wasn't only about "Go to X location and kill some monsters, or X dungeon and kill some more monsters there, or X set part of the map and kill other players there."
The real problem though, now that I look at it, isn't with the development industry. It's with the players themselves. If WoW has proven anything, it's overwhelmingly that players want an extremely narrow, object-oriented game environment for the most part. They need objectives spelled out for them extremely precisely. Maxis actually found out the same thing with The Sims; most human beings simply don't have the initiative or the intelligence required to set their own objectives within the game environment, but instead require the game designers to do it for them.
So yes...UO in particular and other games as well have showed us that there's a lot more to it than WoW, but what WoW itself and players' response to it has overwhelmingly shown is that neither the design industry nor the playerbase itself for the most part *wants* more. If Blizzard have any overwhelming talent, it is a talent for identifying and isolating those elements of fantasy which the gaming public want, and then regurgitating said elements back to the gaming public in an utterly McDonaldised way. They did this with both D2 and Starcraft as well as WoW. The end result is a game which is massively horizontal, rather than vertical. There's no depth whatsoever; it's based around literally mind-numbing repetition, but even though nearly the only two activities include killing monsters and finding gear with which to kill yet more monsters, the sheer number of different monsters and loot in themselves make the game sufficiently superficiallly interesting that you're able to at least temporarily (depending on your degree of intelligence, which thankfully for Blizzard, is minimal in the ca
If so...
1) An open source WoW server emulator. I could do a number of things with that; tweak the AI and make bots for WSG/partying, migrate it to postgresql if that's never been done, (I don't think WoW does run on postgres) and maybe make some new material if I had 3d studio max. Someone else said the Diablo Battle Chest; I'd *maybe* go with D1, but WoW is everything D2 is and more.
2) UT 99 with level editor, and offline copies of this, this, and this site.
3) GTA: San Andreas.
4) Another interesting game-related project if I could learn enough would be a truly decent 3D front end for Nethack. This could possibly serve as a base, but I'd make a lot of graphical alterations.
...that Australia no longer has genuine national sovereignty distinct from America. We haven't been our own people culturally or economically since the 80s, and the free trade agreement coupled with Howard's ongoing earnestness to subjugate himself to the American government as much as possible are just more nails in the coffin.
:(
The fools who were so adamant for Australia's split with the English monarchy now failed to realise one crucial detail; Australia's genuine independence is never going to happen. If we split with England entirely, America will rush in to fill the void before anyone can blink.
Welcome to the 51st state.
For one thing, it talks about a group (copyright abolitionists) that I've never seen any members of. I've heard about people calling for the death of the patent system, and to a degree I agree with that idea, but I've never seen anyone I don't think who wanted to get rid of copyright law entirely.
Although other than in maybe one case, I've never seen any real merit in the GPL myself, either. Yes, yes, I know I'm going to get a horde of the usual Stallmanite morons responding to this; go back to sleep, guys...I don't care. The main reason is that in my mind, your opinion is founded on a) primarily fear, usually of Microsoft, and b) brainwashing, rather than on any real logic whatsoever. I think that is the reason why I don't actually try and argue with Stallman's zealots any more for the most part...mind control isn't something that *can* be argued with logically. Every single time I see any of them post it proves that point, as well...the message is always the same, and always based purely on fear, hate, and a desire to dominate others. It's a fantastic image for newcomers to Linux to be exposed to.
I still feel that non-copyleft licenses are the way to go, because they give you copyright (which *is* different to public domain in my mind) but nothing else. That is the proverbial gift culture; no strings, and no fear.
I've said before that Microsoft could quite viably be charged under RICO for Ballmer's "Nice OS, would be a shame to see anything happen to it," noises towards Linux, and concievably for the Novell deal as well. Protectionism is protectionism, after all.
People can see the Sherman Act as being anticapitalist if they want, but as far as I'm concerned gangsters on the other hand have no place within a principled economic system. If Ballmer is going to insist on continuing to behave like a gangster, then he should by all means be prosecuted as one.
picking a distro, much harder than you think for the non-initiate.
Depends what you want...different people like their Linux different ways, from what I've seen.
Purely home made:- Linux From Scratch. Here is also a guide I wrote on what you'll need to know first if you want to go down that path.
For pre-cooked meat, but where you still have to add your own sides and sauce:-
Slackware with pkgsrc.
Entirely pre-cooked and delivered, but still very tasty:- Ubuntu.
There is no subversion. First, it would require someone to falsely place something into a GPLed work or GPL something that is patented. Novel has never, I repeat never attempted to do this. They have never indicated they would do this. And they have specifically stated they won't do this. Again were is the problem?
;)
Let me paint a picture for you. You've got a group of sheep out grazing in a field somewhere. Then you've got a couple of shepherds. (Perens and Stallman, in the analogy) The shepherds start waving their arms and gesturing for the sheep to move in a particular direction, (in other words, those two express the opinion that the deal is a bad thing) and the sheep promptly do so. Why? Because they're sheep, and they've been trained to both recognise the shepherds, trust the shepherds, and immediately obey every directive that comes from them. Some of the sheep are perhaps a little more stubborn than others, and might resist somewhat...but in that case, more loyal sheep bleat at and butt the stubborn ones with their heads in order to force them to comply.
I understand that you might hope that human beings would be capable of resisting the urge to engage in such blatantly ovine behaviour, but sadly, the Linux community proves more or less on a daily basis that they aren't.
I've talked with perens. He is an idiot. And I mean that personally. I'm assuming the other you name are in the same league.
Bruce's main flaws in my own mind are a rather monumental overestimation of his own influence, and the usual blind, gibbering terror of that supposed antichrist, Steve Ballmer. Personally I think drawing comparisons between Ballmer and Satan involves radically overestimating Ballmer's level of genuine importance.
It stretches belief to imagine that Microsoft didn't know they were subverting the essence - if not the letter - of the GPL with this deal.
This also however is precisely the point. The "community" is gradually becoming more and more about vague, unwritten, subjective emotional abstractions than anything near as precise as the letter of the law. For anyone wanting to develop/distribute GPL licensed software now, it's no longer enough to merely fulfill the precise written legal requirements of the license. You also have to subscribe to a whole heap of entirely unwritten, subjective ideological bullshit as well. You're required to be an entirely anticapitalist, rabid Marxist, and to worship Stallman as God. Anything less doesn't cut it.
You can be entirely willing to legally adhere to the license in every respect...but unless you're a fully certified member of the cult, nothing else is going to be good enough.
Needless to say, a great many people in the FOSS world, including RMS, Bruce Perens and a lot of others who know a thing or two about this stuff, have castigated Novell for being remarkably stupid. And a lot of us here on Slashdot agree.
Most of those here who agree are the same tiny group who bash people on blogs and in the comment sections of trade press sites for disagreeing with any element of their programming. They're the same group from whom I strongly suspect originated the harassment of Laura Didio, the recent harassment of Oracle, and a number of other such incidents. It's the sort of thing they do. I've got most of them on my freaks list now; they know exactly who they are. They tend to refer to their intimidatory tactics and attempts to enforce Stallman's mind control as activism.
They generally aren't individuals with a huge amount of capacity for objective thought, putting it delicately, but who simply engage in mindless adulation of Stallman, and accept his every word as law without a micron of critical thought of their own whatsoever...they're complete zombies. They're also terrified of Microsoft beyond any vague semblance of reason, and their motivation for reflexively attacking anybody who disagrees with them primarily consists of said fear.
In other words, mentioning that they agree with a certain perspective does absolutely nothing to validate the logic behind said perspective whatsoever.