...but I strongly believe that an expression of opposition to a maximum amount of choice in software reflects a chronic lack of both intelligence and vision in the person making said expression.
People want monoculture for one reason and one reason only: If there is only one choice, they won't have to invest in the mental effort necessary to make a decision between alternatives. There are sadly a very large number of people in the world who more than anything else, seek to avoid being required to use their brains. Choice means that they have to do that...thus, in order to avoid having to use their brains, they also seek to avoid having to make choices. Only having one of everything means that they can do this.
Whenever I hear anyone calling for monoculture or a restriction in the amount of available software choice, I chastise that person for being the entirely voluntarily brainless, small-minded example of insect life that they generally are.
It's worth noting that a high speed suborbital spaceplane was actually mentioned in the History Channel's program on Area 51, some years ago. The man who mentioned it in the program, Mark Farmer, speculated that its' use would primarily be as a fast international troop dropship, although this article does not seem to indicate that.
The HC program also mentioned how it had been later discovered that aircraft such as the AR-71 Blackbird were being developed at Groom some time before official public announcements were made, and that aircraft whose existence was continually officially denied would suddenly be released to a museum after they had been decommissioned. This article possibly lends more evidence in support of that being the case.
Even from a purely empiricist, non UFO perspective, it is tantalising to wonder about what other things they're possibly cooking up under the ground out there, as well...especially considering both the amazing technological advancement and aesthetic beauty of the aircraft we have already seen produced by the facility. This article and the historical cases (such as the Blackbird and stealth programs) also possibly lend hope to the idea that given enough time after the development of the individual inventions/aircraft, we will eventually be able to find out.
In terms of tests, rather than end-of-school tests to see how much kids have learned, what I think we really need (in a lot of places, not just the US) is profiling tests to determine which subjects/study tracks/interests a given kid is going to have/need, and then try to model an individual curriculum accordingly.
The idea of a generic, one-size-fits-all curriculum is fundamentally broken, and always has been, IMHO...to the same degree that a generic, one-size-fits-all operating system usually is. People come from different backgrounds and have different cultural and neurological profiles, as well as different degrees of base intelligence...they therefore have different educational requirements accordingly. If kids with different profiles were also able to have their own environment in the schoolyard as well as in the classroom, it would also go one heck of a long way to reducing bullying/social ostracision overall, I'm guessing...because to quote one old example, the proverbial "nerds" and "jocks" wouldn't have access to each other.
Unfortunately, we're currently lacking a profiling system that is sufficiently accurate (AFAIK anywayz) to be able to create such a system. If we could develop one which genuinely did work and which did not group people unfairly, however, I honestly think it could be an extremely beneficial thing. Above all, of course, the "Gattaca" type scenario would need to be avoided.
Before you start reflexively foaming at the mouth and calling me a bigot or a racist and so on, stop and think. Segregation is primarily a bad thing when it is involuntary...when people are forced to be isolated whether they want to be or not. I am advocating a scenario where people would be able to choose which scenario they put their kids into...the generic one, or the tailored one. I think you'd find that the latter would end up being a lot more popular.
Which is why we need people like RMS, to balance people like Ballmer.
No. They're both wrong, they're both unbalanced, they're both divisive, and they're both destructive.
In terms of what the FSF started out as being, I might have agreed with you. Stallman however in recent years has, to paraphrase Castro, "betrayed the revolution." As such, he is no longer part of the solution...and he may yet have the potential to do just as much damage as Microsoft themselves.
The single most important thing that needs to be clarified here I think is that the element of Linux's userbase which refers to itself as the "Community," (uttering the word with a hoarse, high-pitched shriek is necessary to approximate the word's usage when used by members of said group) are exactly that demographic which Novell (and anyone else sane, for that matter) are least likely to want to have anything to do with.
I've known numerous people who use Linux and work on Linux related projects in any entirely peaceful and positive manner, who did not identify themselves as members of the famous "Community" at all, and who if asked, generally quietly confessed to feeling as much revulsion for it as I myself do.
Let us also be clear on exactly what this "Community" is:- It's a cult, and it's also generally the first thing any of Linux's detractors draw attention to...because they well know that there in fact *is* a genuine problem here. Before one of the very lemmings that I'm actually talking about here pipes up and accuses me of being "disingenuous," as they have in the past, I would also encourage them to go and study the definition of the word cult. I know what it means...When you do, if you're honest, you'll see some parallels. The attitude exhibited by the Debian project in relation to the Iceweasel flap, as one example, can entirely without hyperbole be described as cultic.
Another area where Novell require education is that they seem to be labouring under the genuinely tragic misconception that the "Community" consists of people remotely interested in any form of diplomacy.
They are not. If there is one thing Richard Stallman has taught this group well, it is simply to make demands of anyone they see fit, and then expect that they will be fulfilled to the letter, without being willing to compromise on even minor points. Stallman and the proponents of this kind of radical inflexibility seem to believe that it is the product of superior moral integrity; it is not. It is a documented symptom of the particular neurological affliction known to science as autism, which Stallman has himself admitted that he most likely suffers from. Diplomacy itself is also an art form which was developed and is practiced exclusively among the neurotypical population; Autistic individuals have consistently shown that they are utterly devoid of capacity for it.
That, then, is my central assertion here...that in the context of Linux, the word "community" does not refer to anything which is redeemable or desirable in any way, but instead refers simply to an aggressive, self-righteous, Marxist, radical group of chronically autistic cultists, who have come to believe that they can force the entirety of the rest of humanity to conform with all of their demands, as long as said demands are repeated with sufficient persistence and volume. If Novell believes that with such a group there can be anything remotely approaching sane, rational dialogue, I fear that they are in for an unpleasant awakening.
Everyone here knows that HTML, Javascript and HTTPRequest are not the tools for building feature-rich interactive networked applications
All HTML governs is the formatting of output. You have your client/browser as the UI, which sends and receives I/O back and forth, and what's on the server can be as "feature-rich" as you like. Add low-latency I/O queuing and limited event pre-emption (a la what they typically have in your average online FPS) with a Flash application masking it in the browser...and you're correct that technically speaking, it wouldn't be a real-time interactive application...but it'd be that close that your average end-user isn't going to know the difference.
"Basically what you have is a large portion of the population, mostly younger people under the age of 45, who don't deal with reality."
What you and people *over* the age of 45 call reality, I call senile dementia, Bill.
I can respond by saying that people of the age group you are talking about are entirely the problem. They're just as divorced from reality as anyone else...and the thing is, that although younger people might be divorced from reality as well, they're not able to take their delusion and from that perspective *enact laws.*
Also, if you really want to go there...younger people on average are a lot more intimate with technological developments, particularly where computers are concerned. We're a lot more likely to understand issues because unlike you and your geriatric peers, we actually have to live with said issues. Your generation aren't the ones who've had to die by the thousands in Iraq...many of you, when you *were* our age yourselves, dodged service...which makes you sending members of my generation off to die that much more disgusting. You're also not the ones who are going to have to deal with the real consequences of what your generation has done to the environment...you'll be dead in 20 years.
You are a sick, deeply degraded human being, Mr. O'Reilly...and you shame yourself on a continual basis with your entirely voluntary ignorance and rock stupidity. The only thing that keeps me from fervently wishing that you and other individuals like you did not exist is the realisation that in doing so, I would myself go down to your level.
I am genuinely greatly encouraged to see that there still are some genuine nerds (the term is not meant perjoritively in this context at all, so please do not take it as such) writing to Slashdot. Given the seemingly unending torrent of peurile, juvenile drivel that seems to have inundated the site recently, I badly needed such an event in order to restore my faith in it.
...how there were a lot of text books written about virtual reality in the late 70s or so...I even remember the slogan on the back of one of them, "Virtual Reality will not replace television. It will eat it alive."
Thing is...and this is what none of the academics at the time could have predicted...but "virtual reality," as it turned out, didn't happen.
They are not circumventing the LUA subsystem as you say they do. Their work is in C# and doesn't even use LUA.
What they are circumventing is the prohibition of the automation of certain actions. (And yes, that element of the WoW client *is* governed by Lua)
If you try and write scripts using the Lua subsystem which attempt to automate certain actions, (such as movement) you will get a message saying that that function is reserved for Blizzard's element of the UI, and to reload the UI with said script removed. WoWGlider allows you to circumvent this from outside the program; hence, the DMCA's prohibition of circumvention applies.
Whether WoWGlider itself is written in Lua or not is irrelevant.
I didn't say he wasn't...in fact, I specifically attempted to ensure that I would not say that. He was and is entirely allowed to say that. My objecting to what I perceived as arrogance underlying his statement does not detract from his right to make said statement.
What I specifically objected to was his implicit assumption that *everyone* cares about whether or not software is free. (according to the FSF's definition) It's an assumption that FSF advocates make, or try to make, all the time...and it's actually making use of a particular element of psychological warfare that the CIA documented; that of implicit assumption/agreement. The idea is that if you frame your argument in such a way as to make it sound as though your audience implicitly agrees unquestioningly with your first premise, (usually your most important one) it will be much easier to lead them into agreeing with your second.
Why use Linux as your base OS if you're going to end up needing Windows anyway?
Maybe I don't use either as my "base" OS. Maybe I recognise that each are good at things which the other isn't so good at...and I can do it any number of different ways; dual booting, coLinux in Windows, Wine in Linux, etc.
Did RMS ever insult you at a linux convention or something?
My main problem with Stallman/the FSF, generally speaking, is fourfold:-
They try to tell people in very specific terms how to think, including attempting to dictate choice of vocabulary. The latter is one of the elements of thought reform (read: mind control) as documented by Robert Jay Lifton and other psychologists. This is one area where the FSF shows signs of having begun to follow the pattern of a fairly conventional cult.
They have zero tolerance for perspectives other than their own, and believe that they can and should force everyone else on the planet to conform to their dictates if they simply engage in enough belligerent activism. (Although that again is another customary element of cultism)
Stallman is able to rely on his followers to enforce conformity with his dogma, both here and in other places. They bully people, shout them down, and attempt to perpetuate the hive mentality without Stallman himself needing to be directly involved. In this way, they do the less than pleasant work of advancing "the movement," forward, while Stallman himself gets to remain relatively blameless. (Wow, three for three on the cult checklist...and I hadn't even realised before I wrote this!)
Bradley Kuhn has openly stated that a goal of the FSF is to deny software developers the right to use any license, FOSS or otherwise, other than the GPL. It thus follows that they also seek the erradication of the BSDs.
In other words I basically saw the FSF as relevant to this topic purely from the point of view that I saw someone else who seemed to believe that they had the right to force Blizzard to conform to their wishes. Since I've observed that such a belief system is in line with the FSF's "mindset," as you put it, I saw the association.
A lot of the people who post to Slashdot show indications on a regular basis of being afflicted with the FSF's mind control, so it isn't necessarily unrealistic to assume that said mind control is going to influence the perspective of a person affected by it in general terms, rather than just in one or two areas. Hence, it's likely to be of at least peripheral relevance to pretty much any topic we might mention here, because it's an integral part of the ideological model of a large number of Slashdot readers.
So you're claiming that memory address 0x0F45CD is "a work protected under this title"? Good luck with that...
No...I'm claiming that what's being stored at memory address 0x0F45CD is "a work protected under this title." Pedantry, I know...but that is what law is generally based on.
You're a fanboy, and when people point it out to you
I don't see it so much as fanboyishness as feeling as though I can relate in my own head to why Blizzard possibly has zero tolerance towards certain demographics of gamers with script kiddie tendencies.
But maybe I am a fanboy; I hadn't actually heard it put like that before, so it's a new concept. One thing that annoys me about that somewhat though is that a lot of people on Slashdot are irrationally worshipful about a whole lot of things, and somehow that's ok...I happen to be about one particular thing, and there's something wrong with it. I suspect however that what is really wrong with it is the fact that Blizzard are a corporation...and in the Marxist groupthink that Slashdot is renowned for, there aren't too many worse things than corporations.;-)
My understanding is that WoWGlider works by reading the memory WoW writes to, using that to determine what's going on, and sending keypresses and mouse movements to control the character. Please explain how this is a copyright violation or circumventing an authentication measure.
They could get him under Section 1201 (a); "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
The game's Lua subsystem allows for macroing and automation of game elements, but also disallows access to the automation of a number of other elements of the game as well. As such, WoWGlider circumvents the Lua subsystem's prohibition of access to said game elements (such as commands allowing automation of movement and so on)
I myself use a number of scripts utilising the Lua subsystem, some of which automate quite complex series' of actions. The system is more flexible than it is given credit for.
I'm also curious...Did you ever play Ultima Online? The botting scenario got so bad with that game in the end that at times it was impossible to tell who was a live player at the keyboard and who wasn't. It wrecked the game, from the point of view of being multiplayer...if you're going to play something on your own with a heap of AI running around, that by definition isn't a multiplayer game...it's single player.
Would you like all macro programs, even ones that aren't used for cheating in games, to be illegal? Because this is how they all work.
You're keeping your argument centred on macro programs in general terms, rather than talking about WoWGlider specifically, because I think you know that that is the only area where you've got a solid argument. It probably couldn't *quite* be classified as a straw man...but it's close.;-)
There are two points here:- a) WoWGlider is being used exclusively to perform action/s that Blizzard are opposed to. Macroing itself *is* allowed within the game via the Lua subsystem; I myself use a number of scripts within this system, some of which perform quite complex series of actions.
b) Use of *any* programs which run outside WoW and interact with it are specifically prohibited in the Terms of Service. What that means is that it doesn't in fact matter what WoWGlider does; as a third party program it is in violation of the ToS.
The bottom line quite simply is this:- Blizzard own and run the server network that WoW is hosted on. Any offline establishment (restaurants, gaming houses and so on) on the planet has the ability to set its' own house rules with regards to dress, behaviour, and sometimes other things, and generally also has bouncers to enforce said rules. The only reason why there's a difference to that in this case in your and other people's heads is because the WoW client runs on your local machine.
Following on from that analogy, though...if you have a problem with the house rules of a given establishment, go somewhere else. There are that many other both open and closed source games around (both on and offline, and single and multiplayer) that it should not be a problem.
I think the major problem here is the attitude (perpetuated, as usual, by Richard Stallman) that says that purely because you're handing over money, any given vendor is both legally and morally obligated to give you whatever you want. They are not. They are obligated to give you exactly what has been negotiated by you and them; no more, and no less. Blizzard's ToS is very specific as to what you are being given in exchange for your money, as well as outlining what your remedy is if you're unhappy with that; to walk away, after which you're entirely free to either play a game produced by someone else, join a FOSS project creating a game which may have a scenario more to your liking, or start a project to do so. Blizzard do not (and could not) try to forbid you from playing a competing game if you are unhappy with their terms.
A question...why is being a fanboy necessarily a bad thing? Do you advocate approaching everything from a perspective of jaded cynicism? I've noticed the marked tendency towards general negativity on Slashdot...and when people deviate from that, the assumption is made that the person in question is either hopelessly naive, or a nut.
What precisely was the problem with bnetd? Other than the technical DMCA infraction, that is. It wasn't used to cheat or to degrade anyone else's experience with online games.
Apart from anything else, I simply found myself wondering why the people in question couldn't simply develop their own game, rather than spending time back engineering Blizzard's games. Plenty of FOSS games exist, or they could have made something with WorldForge, as another example. Yet another thing they could have done was to create a FOSS D1 or 2 clone (with enough difference that they could avoid prosecution, a la FreeCiv) with all the multiplayer capabilities they wanted. I have to believe that given the technical requirements of bnetd itself, they would have had the skill necessary to do such a thing, as well.
Personally, I hope they legally/economically bury him.
The reality is that Blizzard have had to do battle with people like Michael Donnelly since the days of the first Diablo game. Such people amount to destructive, sociopathic adolescents. They don't contribute anything positive, while in the case of Diablo 1 and 2 anyway, managing to degrade gameplay for pretty much everyone.
People can call me a shill as much as they want, but Blizzard are one company that I feel very positive about. I know there are a lot of companies where this isn't the case, but in my experience anyway with Blizz in particular it's pretty simple...be square with them, and they will be square with you. Be a subversive, anarchic 14 year old, (as in the case of bnetd, WoWGlider, and the D1/D2 hacks) and you'll get what you deserve...the proverbial legal takedown. While I normally don't condone the existence of the DMCA, I'm glad it's there in cases like this, since it gives them some legal framework to exact justice.
(Note to any of the abovementioned subversive types who may feel like responding to this and attempting to refute me; please don't bother. You don't agree with me, I don't agree with you...let's just leave it at that. I've spent more than enough time arguing with Slashdot's more anarchic (read: pro-FSF) residents in the past...I really don't want to know that you exist any more, to be honest)
The horse has bolted. Microsoft can't collect a guaranteed amount on every PC made by all-in-one OEMs like Dell any more, so now Dr Evil is trying a different tack; collecting on per-machine Linux installs.
His underlying assertion is, as usual, garbage, however. Unless Microshaft own a patent on 8086 assembler, (and this is a wild stab in the dark, but I'm guessing they don't) there is nothing within Linux that Ballmer can honestly lay claim to. It's also entirely unprovable one way or the other that Linux uses Xenix code, if they want to try and claim that. If Ballmer does conjure the ghost of Xenix here, it will be monumentally lame; it's been in mothballs ever since MS decided to go in the DOS direction back in the 80s, and if not for Linux, would remain forgotten about.
If there is one reason why I wish Microsoft would stop doing things like this though, it's because these sorts of actions continue to stoke the fear and radicalism of the FSF crazies, and give Stallman an excuse to become ever more militant. I don't worry about Microsoft succeeding in these slapstick attempts at extortion for one moment; what concerns me is the amount of fear it generates in Linux users, and the actions/perspectives that said fear causes them to take.
I guess if people are stupid enough to pay for something they can have for free, that's their problem and someone is bound to exploit them, if it wasn't RedHat or Novell, someone would fill the gap to exploit these painfully stupid folks.
I see. Do you actually give any thought to how the people who write free software support themselves? I remember when Patrick Volkerding mentioned his illness here a while back...people seemed to spend more time calling him an idiot and accusing him of faking than anything else.
You find it offensive that people attempt to monetise something that you say was written with charitable motivations; if you're talking about middlemen who don't add anything to the software themselves, I'd agree with you...but what about the actual authors of the software?
A lot of people *have* made a lot of money through not generating any tangible good for other people...and I agree that that is a bad thing. That, however, is one extreme end of the spectrum. It sounds to me however that what you're actually advocating is the other extreme end...that people who write software don't have any right to be compensated for what they do in any way; and that if they therefore plan on eating, (or doing any of the various other things that require money in contemporary society) they'd better simply make sure they have another job...and if they don't, tough luck. It's not your problem, right?
Are you really that selfish, or have you simply not thought this through?
With a project of mine, I've had a ton of abuse at times. People telling me it's already been done a million times, that I'm duplicating effort needlessly, that I should just use a pre-existing solution to the problem, etc etc etc.
The bottom line is that around 99.9% of human beings are small minded, brainless insects who are utterly devoid of intelligence, initiative, self-responsibility, creativity, or vision, and who in general terms don't really have any terribly concrete reason to exist. The one thing that said individuals *are* unfailingly good at however is coming up with reasons why you shouldn't do whatever it is you are trying to, why it will fail, why it's already been done before, or why nobody has ever been able to succeed at it before and why do you think you're any different, etc. Some forms of this abuse unique to the Linux community also include particularly vitriolic condemnation of anyone seeking any form of financially gainful activity associated with Linux.
Slashdot itself is a particularly rich source for plentiful examples of these types of people, I've noticed.
Although the level of repetition with which you will encounter this condemnation makes doing so difficult, I urge you above all to ignore it. Realise that in virtually all cases it will come from people whose sole reason for breathing is to accelerate the degradation of the environment, and that as such, all listening to them will do is reduce the chances of you actually doing some genuine good.
If you're trying to accomplish something, realise that that in itself is an extremely reliable indication that you're an infinitely more intelligent and generally redeemable human being than those who are trying to dissuade you from a given objective. Looking at it from this perspective actually makes ignoring them a lot easier...you identify them as the vermin that they are, which then means that their opinion can likewise be summarily discarded.
It is joke posts like this that make the open source community look bad when people take it seriously.
Speaking as someone who's been using Linux for a couple of years now, (and hence not a purely random observer) I can say that the "open source community" consistently proves that to a large degree it consists of fanatical, neurologically aberrant teenagers who (whether chronologically or mentally) aren't worth taking seriously.
A lot is going to need to change before the "Linux community" *are* worth taking seriously, IMHO. The FSF would have to be abolished completely, and their like minded cohorts within the Debian project will also need to be told (in a manner that they will actually listen to) to sit down and shut the fuck up as well.
If those two things could be done, then we might get somewhere...because it'd mean we would have got rid of the two largest sources of division, infighting, and related problems. Then people might be able to get some actual work done in peace.
This isn't a matter of Blizzard's feelings getting hurt by the community. That's not how adults make decisions.
Strange. I guess by that logic then, you've proven my point that most people in the Linux community aren't adults...because their feelings being hurt by the perceived actions of various corporations is exactly what has motivated them to make certain decisions. (Such as boycotts, etc)
Slashdot Mirror
...but I strongly believe that an expression of opposition to a maximum amount of choice in software reflects a chronic lack of both intelligence and vision in the person making said expression.
People want monoculture for one reason and one reason only: If there is only one choice, they won't have to invest in the mental effort necessary to make a decision between alternatives. There are sadly a very large number of people in the world who more than anything else, seek to avoid being required to use their brains. Choice means that they have to do that...thus, in order to avoid having to use their brains, they also seek to avoid having to make choices. Only having one of everything means that they can do this.
Whenever I hear anyone calling for monoculture or a restriction in the amount of available software choice, I chastise that person for being the entirely voluntarily brainless, small-minded example of insect life that they generally are.
It's worth noting that a high speed suborbital spaceplane was actually mentioned in the History Channel's program on Area 51, some years ago. The man who mentioned it in the program, Mark Farmer, speculated that its' use would primarily be as a fast international troop dropship, although this article does not seem to indicate that.
The HC program also mentioned how it had been later discovered that aircraft such as the AR-71 Blackbird were being developed at Groom some time before official public announcements were made, and that aircraft whose existence was continually officially denied would suddenly be released to a museum after they had been decommissioned. This article possibly lends more evidence in support of that being the case.
Even from a purely empiricist, non UFO perspective, it is tantalising to wonder about what other things they're possibly cooking up under the ground out there, as well...especially considering both the amazing technological advancement and aesthetic beauty of the aircraft we have already seen produced by the facility. This article and the historical cases (such as the Blackbird and stealth programs) also possibly lend hope to the idea that given enough time after the development of the individual inventions/aircraft, we will eventually be able to find out.
In terms of tests, rather than end-of-school tests to see how much kids have learned, what I think we really need (in a lot of places, not just the US) is profiling tests to determine which subjects/study tracks/interests a given kid is going to have/need, and then try to model an individual curriculum accordingly.
The idea of a generic, one-size-fits-all curriculum is fundamentally broken, and always has been, IMHO...to the same degree that a generic, one-size-fits-all operating system usually is. People come from different backgrounds and have different cultural and neurological profiles, as well as different degrees of base intelligence...they therefore have different educational requirements accordingly. If kids with different profiles were also able to have their own environment in the schoolyard as well as in the classroom, it would also go one heck of a long way to reducing bullying/social ostracision overall, I'm guessing...because to quote one old example, the proverbial "nerds" and "jocks" wouldn't have access to each other.
Unfortunately, we're currently lacking a profiling system that is sufficiently accurate (AFAIK anywayz) to be able to create such a system. If we could develop one which genuinely did work and which did not group people unfairly, however, I honestly think it could be an extremely beneficial thing. Above all, of course, the "Gattaca" type scenario would need to be avoided.
Before you start reflexively foaming at the mouth and calling me a bigot or a racist and so on, stop and think. Segregation is primarily a bad thing when it is involuntary...when people are forced to be isolated whether they want to be or not. I am advocating a scenario where people would be able to choose which scenario they put their kids into...the generic one, or the tailored one. I think you'd find that the latter would end up being a lot more popular.
http://linux.slashdot.org/~petrus4/
Check my message history...I've written about this subject at great length.
Which is why we need people like RMS, to balance people like Ballmer.
No. They're both wrong, they're both unbalanced, they're both divisive, and they're both destructive.
In terms of what the FSF started out as being, I might have agreed with you. Stallman however in recent years has, to paraphrase Castro, "betrayed the revolution." As such, he is no longer part of the solution...and he may yet have the potential to do just as much damage as Microsoft themselves.
The single most important thing that needs to be clarified here I think is that the element of Linux's userbase which refers to itself as the "Community," (uttering the word with a hoarse, high-pitched shriek is necessary to approximate the word's usage when used by members of said group) are exactly that demographic which Novell (and anyone else sane, for that matter) are least likely to want to have anything to do with.
I've known numerous people who use Linux and work on Linux related projects in any entirely peaceful and positive manner, who did not identify themselves as members of the famous "Community" at all, and who if asked, generally quietly confessed to feeling as much revulsion for it as I myself do.
Let us also be clear on exactly what this "Community" is:- It's a cult, and it's also generally the first thing any of Linux's detractors draw attention to...because they well know that there in fact *is* a genuine problem here. Before one of the very lemmings that I'm actually talking about here pipes up and accuses me of being "disingenuous," as they have in the past, I would also encourage them to go and study the definition of the word cult. I know what it means...When you do, if you're honest, you'll see some parallels. The attitude exhibited by the Debian project in relation to the Iceweasel flap, as one example, can entirely without hyperbole be described as cultic.
Another area where Novell require education is that they seem to be labouring under the genuinely tragic misconception that the "Community" consists of people remotely interested in any form of diplomacy.
They are not. If there is one thing Richard Stallman has taught this group well, it is simply to make demands of anyone they see fit, and then expect that they will be fulfilled to the letter, without being willing to compromise on even minor points. Stallman and the proponents of this kind of radical inflexibility seem to believe that it is the product of superior moral integrity; it is not. It is a documented symptom of the particular neurological affliction known to science as autism, which Stallman has himself admitted that he most likely suffers from. Diplomacy itself is also an art form which was developed and is practiced exclusively among the neurotypical population; Autistic individuals have consistently shown that they are utterly devoid of capacity for it.
That, then, is my central assertion here...that in the context of Linux, the word "community" does not refer to anything which is redeemable or desirable in any way, but instead refers simply to an aggressive, self-righteous, Marxist, radical group of chronically autistic cultists, who have come to believe that they can force the entirety of the rest of humanity to conform with all of their demands, as long as said demands are repeated with sufficient persistence and volume. If Novell believes that with such a group there can be anything remotely approaching sane, rational dialogue, I fear that they are in for an unpleasant awakening.
Everyone here knows that HTML, Javascript and HTTPRequest are not the tools for building feature-rich interactive networked applications
All HTML governs is the formatting of output. You have your client/browser as the UI, which sends and receives I/O back and forth, and what's on the server can be as "feature-rich" as you like. Add low-latency I/O queuing and limited event pre-emption (a la what they typically have in your average online FPS) with a Flash application masking it in the browser...and you're correct that technically speaking, it wouldn't be a real-time interactive application...but it'd be that close that your average end-user isn't going to know the difference.
"Basically what you have is a large portion of the population, mostly younger people under the age of 45, who don't deal with reality."
What you and people *over* the age of 45 call reality, I call senile dementia, Bill.
I can respond by saying that people of the age group you are talking about are entirely the problem. They're just as divorced from reality as anyone else...and the thing is, that although younger people might be divorced from reality as well, they're not able to take their delusion and from that perspective *enact laws.*
Also, if you really want to go there...younger people on average are a lot more intimate with technological developments, particularly where computers are concerned. We're a lot more likely to understand issues because unlike you and your geriatric peers, we actually have to live with said issues. Your generation aren't the ones who've had to die by the thousands in Iraq...many of you, when you *were* our age yourselves, dodged service...which makes you sending members of my generation off to die that much more disgusting. You're also not the ones who are going to have to deal with the real consequences of what your generation has done to the environment...you'll be dead in 20 years.
You are a sick, deeply degraded human being, Mr. O'Reilly...and you shame yourself on a continual basis with your entirely voluntary ignorance and rock stupidity. The only thing that keeps me from fervently wishing that you and other individuals like you did not exist is the realisation that in doing so, I would myself go down to your level.
I am genuinely greatly encouraged to see that there still are some genuine nerds (the term is not meant perjoritively in this context at all, so please do not take it as such) writing to Slashdot. Given the seemingly unending torrent of peurile, juvenile drivel that seems to have inundated the site recently, I badly needed such an event in order to restore my faith in it.
Thank you.
...how there were a lot of text books written about virtual reality in the late 70s or so...I even remember the slogan on the back of one of them,
"Virtual Reality will not replace television. It will eat it alive."
Thing is...and this is what none of the academics at the time could have predicted...but "virtual reality," as it turned out, didn't happen.
Doom did.
They are not circumventing the LUA subsystem as you say they do. Their work is in C# and doesn't even use LUA.
What they are circumventing is the prohibition of the automation of certain actions. (And yes, that element of the WoW client *is* governed by Lua)
If you try and write scripts using the Lua subsystem which attempt to automate certain actions, (such as movement) you will get a message saying that that function is reserved for Blizzard's element of the UI, and to reload the UI with said script removed. WoWGlider allows you to circumvent this from outside the program; hence, the DMCA's prohibition of circumvention applies.
Whether WoWGlider itself is written in Lua or not is irrelevant.
If he wants to say that, he should be allowed to.
I didn't say he wasn't...in fact, I specifically attempted to ensure that I would not say that. He was and is entirely allowed to say that. My objecting to what I perceived as arrogance underlying his statement does not detract from his right to make said statement.
What I specifically objected to was his implicit assumption that *everyone* cares about whether or not software is free. (according to the FSF's definition) It's an assumption that FSF advocates make, or try to make, all the time...and it's actually making use of a particular element of psychological warfare that the CIA documented; that of implicit assumption/agreement. The idea is that if you frame your argument in such a way as to make it sound as though your audience implicitly agrees unquestioningly with your first premise, (usually your most important one) it will be much easier to lead them into agreeing with your second.
Why use Linux as your base OS if you're going to end up needing Windows anyway?
Maybe I don't use either as my "base" OS. Maybe I recognise that each are good at things which the other isn't so good at...and I can do it any number of different ways; dual booting, coLinux in Windows, Wine in Linux, etc.
My main problem with Stallman/the FSF, generally speaking, is fourfold:-
In other words I basically saw the FSF as relevant to this topic purely from the point of view that I saw someone else who seemed to believe that they had the right to force Blizzard to conform to their wishes. Since I've observed that such a belief system is in line with the FSF's "mindset," as you put it, I saw the association.
A lot of the people who post to Slashdot show indications on a regular basis of being afflicted with the FSF's mind control, so it isn't necessarily unrealistic to assume that said mind control is going to influence the perspective of a person affected by it in general terms, rather than just in one or two areas. Hence, it's likely to be of at least peripheral relevance to pretty much any topic we might mention here, because it's an integral part of the ideological model of a large number of Slashdot readers.
So you're claiming that memory address 0x0F45CD is "a work protected under this title"? Good luck with that. ..
No...I'm claiming that what's being stored at memory address 0x0F45CD is "a work protected under this title." Pedantry, I know...but that is what law is generally based on.
You're a fanboy, and when people point it out to you
;-)
I don't see it so much as fanboyishness as feeling as though I can relate in my own head to why Blizzard possibly has zero tolerance towards certain demographics of gamers with script kiddie tendencies.
But maybe I am a fanboy; I hadn't actually heard it put like that before, so it's a new concept. One thing that annoys me about that somewhat though is that a lot of people on Slashdot are irrationally worshipful about a whole lot of things, and somehow that's ok...I happen to be about one particular thing, and there's something wrong with it. I suspect however that what is really wrong with it is the fact that Blizzard are a corporation...and in the Marxist groupthink that Slashdot is renowned for, there aren't too many worse things than corporations.
As Pine is not free software
You're assuming that other people care about that. They may not, and they don't have to, either.
Is it so difficult to allow other people to make their own decisions, rather than pushing your values onto them?
My understanding is that WoWGlider works by reading the memory WoW writes to, using that to determine what's going on, and sending keypresses and mouse movements to control the character. Please explain how this is a copyright violation or circumventing an authentication measure.
;-)
They could get him under Section 1201 (a); "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
The game's Lua subsystem allows for macroing and automation of game elements, but also disallows access to the automation of a number of other elements of the game as well. As such, WoWGlider circumvents the Lua subsystem's prohibition of access to said game elements (such as commands allowing automation of movement and so on)
I myself use a number of scripts utilising the Lua subsystem, some of which automate quite complex series' of actions. The system is more flexible than it is given credit for.
I'm also curious...Did you ever play Ultima Online? The botting scenario got so bad with that game in the end that at times it was impossible to tell who was a live player at the keyboard and who wasn't. It wrecked the game, from the point of view of being multiplayer...if you're going to play something on your own with a heap of AI running around, that by definition isn't a multiplayer game...it's single player.
Would you like all macro programs, even ones that aren't used for cheating in games, to be illegal? Because this is how they all work.
You're keeping your argument centred on macro programs in general terms, rather than talking about WoWGlider specifically, because I think you know that that is the only area where you've got a solid argument. It probably couldn't *quite* be classified as a straw man...but it's close.
There are two points here:-
a) WoWGlider is being used exclusively to perform action/s that Blizzard are opposed to. Macroing itself *is* allowed within the game via the Lua subsystem; I myself use a number of scripts within this system, some of which perform quite complex series of actions.
b) Use of *any* programs which run outside WoW and interact with it are specifically prohibited in the Terms of Service. What that means is that it doesn't in fact matter what WoWGlider does; as a third party program it is in violation of the ToS.
The bottom line quite simply is this:- Blizzard own and run the server network that WoW is hosted on. Any offline establishment (restaurants, gaming houses and so on) on the planet has the ability to set its' own house rules with regards to dress, behaviour, and sometimes other things, and generally also has bouncers to enforce said rules. The only reason why there's a difference to that in this case in your and other people's heads is because the WoW client runs on your local machine.
Following on from that analogy, though...if you have a problem with the house rules of a given establishment, go somewhere else. There are that many other both open and closed source games around (both on and offline, and single and multiplayer) that it should not be a problem.
I think the major problem here is the attitude (perpetuated, as usual, by Richard Stallman) that says that purely because you're handing over money, any given vendor is both legally and morally obligated to give you whatever you want. They are not. They are obligated to give you exactly what has been negotiated by you and them; no more, and no less. Blizzard's ToS is very specific as to what you are being given in exchange for your money, as well as outlining what your remedy is if you're unhappy with that; to walk away, after which you're entirely free to either play a game produced by someone else, join a FOSS project creating a game which may have a scenario more to your liking, or start a project to do so. Blizzard do not (and could not) try to forbid you from playing a competing game if you are unhappy with their terms.
Yet another common a
And quite obviously a fanboy.
A question...why is being a fanboy necessarily a bad thing? Do you advocate approaching everything from a perspective of jaded cynicism? I've noticed the marked tendency towards general negativity on Slashdot...and when people deviate from that, the assumption is made that the person in question is either hopelessly naive, or a nut.
What precisely was the problem with bnetd? Other than the technical DMCA infraction, that is. It wasn't used to cheat or to degrade anyone else's experience with online games.
Apart from anything else, I simply found myself wondering why the people in question couldn't simply develop their own game, rather than spending time back engineering Blizzard's games. Plenty of FOSS games exist, or they could have made something with WorldForge, as another example. Yet another thing they could have done was to create a FOSS D1 or 2 clone (with enough difference that they could avoid prosecution, a la FreeCiv) with all the multiplayer capabilities they wanted. I have to believe that given the technical requirements of bnetd itself, they would have had the skill necessary to do such a thing, as well.
Personally, I hope they legally/economically bury him.
The reality is that Blizzard have had to do battle with people like Michael Donnelly since the days of the first Diablo game. Such people amount to destructive, sociopathic adolescents. They don't contribute anything positive, while in the case of Diablo 1 and 2 anyway, managing to degrade gameplay for pretty much everyone.
People can call me a shill as much as they want, but Blizzard are one company that I feel very positive about. I know there are a lot of companies where this isn't the case, but in my experience anyway with Blizz in particular it's pretty simple...be square with them, and they will be square with you. Be a subversive, anarchic 14 year old, (as in the case of bnetd, WoWGlider, and the D1/D2 hacks) and you'll get what you deserve...the proverbial legal takedown. While I normally don't condone the existence of the DMCA, I'm glad it's there in cases like this, since it gives them some legal framework to exact justice.
(Note to any of the abovementioned subversive types who may feel like responding to this and attempting to refute me; please don't bother. You don't agree with me, I don't agree with you...let's just leave it at that. I've spent more than enough time arguing with Slashdot's more anarchic (read: pro-FSF) residents in the past...I really don't want to know that you exist any more, to be honest)
The horse has bolted. Microsoft can't collect a guaranteed amount on every PC made by all-in-one OEMs like Dell any more, so now Dr Evil is trying a different tack; collecting on per-machine Linux installs.
His underlying assertion is, as usual, garbage, however. Unless Microshaft own a patent on 8086 assembler, (and this is a wild stab in the dark, but I'm guessing they don't) there is nothing within Linux that Ballmer can honestly lay claim to. It's also entirely unprovable one way or the other that Linux uses Xenix code, if they want to try and claim that. If Ballmer does conjure the ghost of Xenix here, it will be monumentally lame; it's been in mothballs ever since MS decided to go in the DOS direction back in the 80s, and if not for Linux, would remain forgotten about.
If there is one reason why I wish Microsoft would stop doing things like this though, it's because these sorts of actions continue to stoke the fear and radicalism of the FSF crazies, and give Stallman an excuse to become ever more militant. I don't worry about Microsoft succeeding in these slapstick attempts at extortion for one moment; what concerns me is the amount of fear it generates in Linux users, and the actions/perspectives that said fear causes them to take.
I guess if people are stupid enough to pay for something they can have for free, that's their problem and someone is bound to exploit them, if it wasn't RedHat or Novell, someone would fill the gap to exploit these painfully stupid folks.
I see. Do you actually give any thought to how the people who write free software support themselves? I remember when Patrick Volkerding mentioned his illness here a while back...people seemed to spend more time calling him an idiot and accusing him of faking than anything else.
You find it offensive that people attempt to monetise something that you say was written with charitable motivations; if you're talking about middlemen who don't add anything to the software themselves, I'd agree with you...but what about the actual authors of the software?
A lot of people *have* made a lot of money through not generating any tangible good for other people...and I agree that that is a bad thing. That, however, is one extreme end of the spectrum. It sounds to me however that what you're actually advocating is the other extreme end...that people who write software don't have any right to be compensated for what they do in any way; and that if they therefore plan on eating, (or doing any of the various other things that require money in contemporary society) they'd better simply make sure they have another job...and if they don't, tough luck. It's not your problem, right?
Are you really that selfish, or have you simply not thought this through?
With a project of mine, I've had a ton of abuse at times. People telling me it's already been done a million times, that I'm duplicating effort needlessly, that I should just use a pre-existing solution to the problem, etc etc etc.
The bottom line is that around 99.9% of human beings are small minded, brainless insects who are utterly devoid of intelligence, initiative, self-responsibility, creativity, or vision, and who in general terms don't really have any terribly concrete reason to exist. The one thing that said individuals *are* unfailingly good at however is coming up with reasons why you shouldn't do whatever it is you are trying to, why it will fail, why it's already been done before, or why nobody has ever been able to succeed at it before and why do you think you're any different, etc. Some forms of this abuse unique to the Linux community also include particularly vitriolic condemnation of anyone seeking any form of financially gainful activity associated with Linux.
Slashdot itself is a particularly rich source for plentiful examples of these types of people, I've noticed.
Although the level of repetition with which you will encounter this condemnation makes doing so difficult, I urge you above all to ignore it. Realise that in virtually all cases it will come from people whose sole reason for breathing is to accelerate the degradation of the environment, and that as such, all listening to them will do is reduce the chances of you actually doing some genuine good.
If you're trying to accomplish something, realise that that in itself is an extremely reliable indication that you're an infinitely more intelligent and generally redeemable human being than those who are trying to dissuade you from a given objective. Looking at it from this perspective actually makes ignoring them a lot easier...you identify them as the vermin that they are, which then means that their opinion can likewise be summarily discarded.
It is joke posts like this that make the open source community look bad when people take it seriously.
Speaking as someone who's been using Linux for a couple of years now, (and hence not a purely random observer) I can say that the "open source community" consistently proves that to a large degree it consists of fanatical, neurologically aberrant teenagers who (whether chronologically or mentally) aren't worth taking seriously.
A lot is going to need to change before the "Linux community" *are* worth taking seriously, IMHO. The FSF would have to be abolished completely, and their like minded cohorts within the Debian project will also need to be told (in a manner that they will actually listen to) to sit down and shut the fuck up as well.
If those two things could be done, then we might get somewhere...because it'd mean we would have got rid of the two largest sources of division, infighting, and related problems. Then people might be able to get some actual work done in peace.
This isn't a matter of Blizzard's feelings getting hurt by the community. That's not how adults make decisions.
Strange. I guess by that logic then, you've proven my point that most people in the Linux community aren't adults...because their feelings being hurt by the perceived actions of various corporations is exactly what has motivated them to make certain decisions. (Such as boycotts, etc)