I can. While *I* agree with your legal assessment, the problem is that with issues like this we're generally not dealing with sane, rational human beings. Rather we're dealing with Stallman's legion of mindless GPL attack bots, some of whom I've seen posting on this site. Their perspective is entirely emotive; logic doesn't enter into it at all. Thus, your argument could be completely bullet proof from a logical perspective, but if they *feel* that distributing binary drivers is evil, they won't care...they'll accuse you of being devoid of principles.
Someone hand this dude a jar of Marmite. That'll teach him.
Rather than handing it to him, I'd advocate chaining his legs and arms together and giving him Vegemite intravenously. I actually heard about what happened to someone who tried shooting up Vegemite once...it really wasn't pretty.;-)
Thanks, Mr Ruddock. You've just given me the legal right to do something which I wouldn't have otherwise hesitated to do for a nanosecond anyway.
This is the kind of law that gets passed by egocentric, naive politicians who assume that every unjust, unenforceable law they pass gets obeyed. Making any law regarding piracy is the practical equivalent of urinating into an oncoming cyclone; it has exactly the same degree of usefulness for what you're trying to do.
"FreeBSD is what you get when a group of UNIX hackers sit down to write a port of UNIX for the PC. Linux is what happens when a group of PC hackers sit down and write a UNIX clone for the PC."
For starters, read this. Linux isn't simply decentralised; it's unplanned. There's a very large difference. (Debian users/developers, I acknowledge you as an exception, here)
Secondly, go and get a copy of bsd.port.mk, read it and some sample makefiles. Compare this with rpm, and some of the spec file examples you can find from Mandrake and a few of the other distributions that use it. Note your conclusions.
It also needs to be pointed out that lack of comparitive lack of hardware support should not be considered an indictment of an operating system, in itself. Unfortunately, hardware support exists as part of a vicious cycle; if more people use the system, more hardware will become supported because of the increased demand. Linux has experienced its' own problems in this regard.
Linux is more popular because:- a) If anything, FreeBSD's developers are actually *more* strongly technically oriented, and hence more obscure. I've repeatedly read the claims about Theo de Raadt being difficult to work with, but my own theory on that is simply that Theo is possibly someone who genuinely is unusually intellectually gifted, and hence finds himself becoming deeply frustrated at times when he is unable to communicate his ideas to others in a manner that they can understand. I've considered it as tragic as anyone else when UNIX users in general behave in a manner which suggests that they feel superior to their fellow man; however, the reality is that this superiority complex is genuinely justified in most cases.
b) Richard Stallman has, I believe, expended a large amount of effort to discredit the BSD license and discourage its' use as thoroughly as possible.
c) Yes, the BSD license *is* incompatible with corporate greed. Might we be honest here however and admit that that is more an indictment of corporate moral degeneracy than it is the BSD license? The other thing is...I suspect that the only reason why the BSD license even exists as such at all is actually because other licenses do. In other words, originally there existed a scenario where in software authors' minds, software being devoid of ownership was something known/thought of at an instinctive or barely conscious level. If you look at bsd.port.mk, Jordan Hubbard's statement there is that the file is in the public domain. Not "free as in freedom." Just plain free, in every possible sense of the word, all at once. In Richard Stallman's case, the definition of freedom has become perverted and distorted, and looking at the BSD and some of the Creative Commons license can show us why that is so.
I remember reading another quote:- "Freedom is the only law that genius knows."
It's also the only law that true genius needs. What we now call FOSS originally came from a place where some abnormally intelligent, deeply spiritual people wrote and saw software as simply one part of an entire world that they wanted to live in; a world where it is understood instinctively that humanity is an intimately connected, genetically related group, and that each additional human being who exists has priceless value as a means of that group being able to express itself in a unique and previously entirely undiscovered way.
Contrast that to the type of vision that groups like Microsoft, WIPO and the RIAA have, and you might begin to understand why the BSD license hasn't become as popular. It is surprising that they tolerate even the GPL, watered down though it is.
I'm not worried about this NSA situation at all as long as they are only recording phone numbers and not any personal information. (Emphasis mine)
From Merriam-Webster:-
Main Entry: naive Variant(s): or naïve/nä-'Ev/ Function: adjective Inflected Form(s): naiver; -est Etymology: French naïve, feminine of naïf, from Old French, inborn, natural, from Latin nativus native
1 : marked by unaffected simplicity : ARTLESS, INGENUOUS
2 a : deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment; especially : CREDULOUS b : not previously subjected to experimentation or a particular experimental situation (made the test with naive rats); also : not having previously used a particular drug (as marijuana)
You refer to other voters as a bunch of sheep, and then admit you voted for Bush simply because you didn't think much of Kerry, in a country where voting is not compulsory.
I'm not going to say anything else...but think about that for a few moments.
a) I'm guessing the practical negative implications of this have not yet begun to materialise. Whenever I hear anyone offer the rationale that "only wrongdoers have anything to worry about," I remind the speaker that it's the government that holds the definition of wrongdoing, (in a legal sense) and who can thus change it. Hence, you might be going about your business, doing something which previously wasn't considered wrong at all, and you'll suddenly get a visit from a government worker wanting you to answer some questions. Hold on...You're not doing anything wrong, right? Well, you see sir, there's been this new legislation passed recently...
b) People obviously must not have much faith in the pre-existing legal framework...either that, or they're entirely willing to ignore it, which is perhaps even more alarming. The point though is that...hasn't anyone stopped to consider that maybe the reason why wiretapping has been completely illegal up to this point is *because* it's so dangerous? Although it hasn't happened recently, there was a time when laws existed for valid reasons.;-)
Either way though...this is an indication that things are nicely on track for the expected naked coup de tat/subsequent revolution in 2008. Although it may seem unbelievable, as I said above, the negative ramifications of everything Bush has been doing still haven't entirely registered with a good portion of the population yet...they're still not hurting enough. Eventually that will change, however...and when it does, there's going to be complete chaos.
Anyone who thinks Wikipedia isn't self-censoring should study the reversion histories of either the Amway or Richard Stallman articles. It also is simply not true to say that anyone can edit any article in any circumstance. Article editing can be (and is) disabled for individual articles on a routine basis, and such also is not typically done via consensus.
Wikipedia is a great thing...I'm not denying that for a moment. What I do have a problem with however is that rather than concentrating on its' genuine good points, people have this annoying tendency to make positive claims about it which simply aren't true. It is only partially democratic; it certainly isn't entirely.
I've heard this said a lot, and I don't entirely agree with it. My primary character is a Forsaken mage. I consider the Tirisfal Glades area to be extremely atmospheric and as well populated with monsters and quests as any other area of the game that I've seen. Thunder Bluff and Mulgore are also beautiful, and the Barrens are a wonderful approximation of a savannah environment in my mind.
I will agree with anyone that Orgrimmar is probably the single least impressive city in the game, but that is almost to be expected. Blizz's cultural inspiration for the Orcs in particular has always seemed rather confused, to me...somewhere between Klingons and Scotsmen.;-)
>Point in case: yeah, so your new character created on an empty >server still has no problems. Whop-de-freakin'-do. Big surprise >that. Mine had no problems after a week either.
What I meant was primarily that none of the *gameplay* issues which I saw with UO are present in WoW. Yes, I've experienced a queue on my resident server now, (Jubei'Thos) and yes, I've also now experienced the joy of Tuesday night. One other problem which I'll admit having is that on my server at least, Alliance players apparently outnumber Horde by at least five or so to one. Is this last issue common to other servers as well?
I'm guessing that your perspective is that it was the ownership of people who'd bought copies of Diablo/Diablo 2.
My own perspective about bnetd though is that Blizzard (and anyone who develops an application or protocol, for that matter) has the right to decide whether to open the source of said application or document the workings of the protocol, or not.
I'm not going to disagree with anyone who says that FOSS is a good thing. It's beneficial in a lot of different ways. What I do have problems with on the other hand is a philosophy which says that people must release everything they produce as FOSS, and that they don't have any right to decide otherwise. It IMHO should be a choice.
I've just started playing WoW a week ago, and my main character reached level 14 this morning. (Male forsaken mage) It is an amazing game...by far the most mature MMORPG I've seen. Virtually none of what I considered flaws in Ultima Online in present here.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and state as I have before that I do not consider Blizzard the evil company that many seem to make them out to be. Yes, they're strict, and yes, they come across as somewhat paranoid with regards to the rules, but given what I remember of the PKs in UO and the Diablo hackers on Battlenet, I believe that Blizzard have reason to feel threatened. The average teenage PK you'll encounter on an MMORPG can without exaggeration be described as completely sociopathic.
The other element of my perspective (and I realise that this one isn't going to go over well with those Slashdot readers who prefer to use Richard Stallman's brain in leiu of their own) is that Blizzard runs the service, and as such, they're completely entitled to set house rules. The user, as always, is likewise entitled to decide whether or not s/he finds said rules agreeable and thus hand over their money.
I also considered (and still consider) Blizzard to have been entirely within their rights to squelch bnetd. I also tend to strongly suspect that that particular project would have been started (and run) by the same type of reflexive Stallmanite fanatics as Andrew Tridgell. Namely people who find the concept of software ownership difficult to tolerate.
I'm also not interested in hearing about how the bnetd coders were contributing to Stallman's divinely sanctioned crusade to save the rest of humanity from the evil corporations. Yes, I do also hold the belief that *some* of said corporations are evil, but I'm definitely not waiting for the FSF attack bots to save me from them...primarily because I believe that the FSF itself has its' own agenda which (in some respects at least) is arguably just as unwholesome as that of said corporations. Stallman isn't any less authoritarian, or any more morally desirable, than anyone else in my opinion.
It just wouldn't be Slashdot if there wasn't some Debian whoring to accompany an article about Linux...it's like the chorus of a song. You can almost set your watch by it.;)
Repeat after me, kids:-
(After having messed your hair up, injecting some salt water into your eyes for that rabid, bloodshot look, and using a hoarse, wheezing scream for emphasis)
Being honest, I've never actually seen a concrete definition of what the word "community" in the context of Linux actually means.
However, by implication I've tended to suspect that Richard Stallman intended it to refer to his vision of a relatively small, highly insular group of individuals who, while being interested in mutual co-operation within said group, were distrustful at best (and openly contemptuous or hostile at worst) of outsiders. It also seemed to me to refer to a group environment in which a particular belief system/worldview was held, and where there was an expectation that members would rigidly enforce adherence to this worldview among other members.
If this is starting to sound like I'm referring to a cult, then to a degree, I actually think that perhaps I am. This however is merely what I have observed.
I suspect an awareness may be dawning that his star is starting to fade. He's probably trying to cash in while he still can, before he slides into more or less total irrelevance.
To his devotees, Stallman can do no wrong. To the rest of us, he's just one more cult leader. Wasn't the first, won't be the last.
Whenever it's learned on here that someone wants to actually get paid for what they do, they're immediately branded as the spawn of Satan.
I dislike a lot of what corporations do as much as the next person, but do we really need this kneejerk response that anybody who wants to make *any* money at all is declared soulless, ravening evil?
People need to eat, and they generally also want to do a lot of other things...and last I checked, food and most of said other things usually cost money. That has to come from somewhere, and what I really think is wrong is the idea that the only morally legitimate means of earning it is sitting in a cubicle like a battery chicken for eight (or however many more) hours a day.
If you're going to come back at me with the "donation" response as well, don't bother. I'm aware that the only real reason why 98% of the readership of this site believe that making money from software is evil is because Richard Stallman said so...not because they themselves actually have a reason for said belief.
Yes, the corporate rampage in a lot of different areas is a problem...but kneejerk, mindless Communism is too. They're both extremes, and they're both equally undesirable. RMS is as much a destructive fanatic in his own way as Gates or Ballmer are in theirs. Both sides want to remake the world in *their* own image, and to hell with what anybody else wants.
A lot of people here pride themselves on being intellectuals...but sometimes, some of you really don't act like it.
...and smart money says they won't be the last either. However, before them, such cults as Amway, Scientology, and the FSF adopted the tactic of using their Wikipedia article as free PR.
The Amway and Scientology articles are now more or less genuinely neutral; presumably the group representatives there got sick of having to constantly babysit the page. RMS on the other hand has a much easier time of it...he's got a dedicated team of zealots who are willing to wage an endless revert war on his page; nothing even remotely critical of him is allowed.
As I've said, this is one of the main areas in which Wikipedia has problems...and said problems aren't going to go away any time soon.
>Some of us in America would actually prefer news from the BBC. ] >At least for world news coverage, the Beeb does a far better job >than American news.
Before around 2001, I would have agreed with that. Then their presenters started worshipping the ground Bush walked on, and became a lot more sympathetic towards their own Prime Minister Wormtounge, as well.
Back in the 70s and 80s, (and presumably earlier) the BBC might have had some degree of journalistic integrity. These days however, they're just like any other big corp...Be nice to the important people, and don't bite the hand that feeds you.
I'd suggest either the original Unreal Tournament, or (if you're feeling a bit more adventurous) UT2004.
Given how old the original UT is, that might surprise you a bit...however, it's an extremely capable engine, nearly everything's scriptable, (UnrealScript is a cut down Java) and mapping is infinitely faster and easier than for the Quakes. You've also got an enormous amount of existing code examples available online, in the sense that the source for UnrealScript mods and mutators can be extracted from the.u files.
True, they're not open source. However, there's no other package on the planet quite like UnrealED, and so long as you don't want to make money with your project, (which you've said you haven't) Epic don't really mind what you do with it too much.
While in the past I spent a considerable amount of time gnashing my teeth in lamentation over the fact that insects like yourself exist, recently I've learned to console myself by remembering that I
a) Have moved out of my parents' house, b) Live above ground, c) Have a girlfriend, and d) Therefore am not in the position of likely being a lonely, alienated virgin for the rest of my life.
Either get some psychotropics and get the fuck over yourself, my friend...or don't, and live with the consequences.
That, in a single word, is the answer to this particular question.
Most of the Linux users I've seen aren't rude or antisocial because they think they've got a better OS necessarily. (although that can definitely be part of it)
Rather, it's because a very large number of them are afflicted with a neurological profile which has marked tendencies towards overwhelming pedantry, non-mainstream interests, and a general near-complete lack of ability to interact socially with that portion of the human race that actually are normal.
So yeah...it's not so much snobbery, as it is that Linux users genuinely are different, without using politically incorrect terminology. Said difference exists at a neurological and indeed, even genetic, level.
Although my current addiction to gaming means that most of my recent computing has been Windows based, I have long believed and will continue to believe that for the most part, UNIX and its' derivatives genuinely represent the way God intended man to use a computer.
Despite continual advances and new wrinkles being thrown at us in the area of graphical user interfaces, for many tasks the console is still fundamental and without peer where speed is concerned. Microsoft and Apple can crow about their own approaches all they like; UNIX existed before both of them, and its' descendants will exist after those two companies' names have passed out of human memory.
On reading Eric Raymond's The Art of UNIX Programming, I came to realise that that book offered not just a methodology for programming, but for life in general. It also describes the thoughts and philosophies of a group of people who were as pioneering, adventurous, and brilliant as any other in human history, and to whom larger humanity will owe a debt of gratitude for at least the next several hundred years to come.
ISPs could save a LOT of money on bandwidth if they had caching proxy servers.
I've been online long enough to be able to remember a time when (in Australia at least, and presumably in the US) ISPs actually did do this. Of course, that was back when ISPs were run by people who actually knew what they were doing; we're going back a long way, here.;) These days I know better than to contact the tech support of any ISP I use, since I've found in virtually every case that I generally know around a hundred times more about a given problem than the person on the other end of the line.
ISPs used to be localised small businesses made up of people who were simply a bit more technically inclined than most. These days on the other hand, you'll have local dialin nodes run by the usual large, faceless corporations. They employ legions of dumb kids straight out of high school, and seem to expect XP's wizards to serve as a substitute for training, for the most part. Heaven forbid that anyone they employ would be educated in anything so arcane as hardware installation or networking theory, let alone having experience with a UNIX-based operating system...which of course they *should.* I haven't heard of Squid running on XP...and thus it doesn't get used.
Jimbo's creation isn't anywhere near as freewheeling as he would have people believe. There are bills to pay, (hardware upgrades, bandwidth costs, and so on) and he doesn't want to alienate those who might otherwise be willing to pay them. That includes members of such groups as Amway, and there is also a particularly strict group of thought police attached to the article about Richard Stallman. When the slogan talks about a free encyclopedia which anyone can edit, they should really clarify it by saying that anyone can edit it so long as their edits don't include anything politically incorrect, or which might offend people who would otherwise possibly donate.
The other thing to realise is that the neutral point of view policy is generally applied *extremely* inconsistently. There are very often miniature communities which will attach themselves to various articles, (the GNU/Stallman articles are probably the best example of this that I know of) and they generally have a consensus about what they will or will not allow in an article. Said consensus also doesn't necessarily have anything to do with genuinely factual information, although one hopes that it normally does. I personally believe that the entire idea behind the NPOV policy is broken, simply because it isn't realistically possible. The only real reason why they attempt to maintain it is because they want to try and achieve a level of encyclopedic legitimacy which again, isn't really possible. I also don't believe that not having encyclopedic legitimacy in certain people's minds doesn't detract from Wikipedia's genuine usefulness; especially given that the people who are skeptical about the idea are likely to remain so, and it therefore makes a lot more sense to be realistic about what is or is not possible, rather than maintain something unworkable in order to try and impress people whose opinion is unfavourable anyway.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Although Wikipedia genuinely is extremely valuable when it comes to many topics, politics and people are the two main areas where it is severely flawed, and where given human nature, it probably can't help being flawed.
Wikipedia is as much subject to the Golden Rule as anything else these days; that is, that whoever has the gold makes the rules.
Slashdot Mirror
Come on, somebody poke a hole in that.
I can. While *I* agree with your legal assessment, the problem is that with issues like this we're generally not dealing with sane, rational human beings. Rather we're dealing with Stallman's legion of mindless GPL attack bots, some of whom I've seen posting on this site. Their perspective is entirely emotive; logic doesn't enter into it at all. Thus, your argument could be completely bullet proof from a logical perspective, but if they *feel* that distributing binary drivers is evil, they won't care...they'll accuse you of being devoid of principles.
Someone hand this dude a jar of Marmite. That'll teach him.
;-)
Rather than handing it to him, I'd advocate chaining his legs and arms together and giving him Vegemite intravenously. I actually heard about what happened to someone who tried shooting up Vegemite once...it really wasn't pretty.
Thanks, Mr Ruddock.
You've just given me the legal right to do something which I wouldn't have otherwise hesitated to do for a nanosecond anyway.
This is the kind of law that gets passed by egocentric, naive politicians who assume that every unjust, unenforceable law they pass gets obeyed. Making any law regarding piracy is the practical equivalent of urinating into an oncoming cyclone; it has exactly the same degree of usefulness for what you're trying to do.
"War Is Peace!"
"Freedom is Slavery!"
"Ignorance is Strength!"
"WE LOVE BIG BROTHER!"
I remember the famous quip:-
"FreeBSD is what you get when a group of UNIX hackers sit down to write a port of UNIX for the PC. Linux is what happens when a group of PC hackers sit down and write a UNIX clone for the PC."
For starters, read this. Linux isn't simply decentralised; it's unplanned. There's a very large difference. (Debian users/developers, I acknowledge you as an exception, here)
Secondly, go and get a copy of bsd.port.mk, read it and some sample makefiles. Compare this with rpm, and some of the spec file examples you can find from Mandrake and a few of the other distributions that use it. Note your conclusions.
It also needs to be pointed out that lack of comparitive lack of hardware support should not be considered an indictment of an operating system, in itself. Unfortunately, hardware support exists as part of a vicious cycle; if more people use the system, more hardware will become supported because of the increased demand. Linux has experienced its' own problems in this regard.
Linux is more popular because:-
a) If anything, FreeBSD's developers are actually *more* strongly technically oriented, and hence more obscure. I've repeatedly read the claims about Theo de Raadt being difficult to work with, but my own theory on that is simply that Theo is possibly someone who genuinely is unusually intellectually gifted, and hence finds himself becoming deeply frustrated at times when he is unable to communicate his ideas to others in a manner that they can understand. I've considered it as tragic as anyone else when UNIX users in general behave in a manner which suggests that they feel superior to their fellow man; however, the reality is that this superiority complex is genuinely justified in most cases.
b) Richard Stallman has, I believe, expended a large amount of effort to discredit the BSD license and discourage its' use as thoroughly as possible.
c) Yes, the BSD license *is* incompatible with corporate greed. Might we be honest here however and admit that that is more an indictment of corporate moral degeneracy than it is the BSD license? The other thing is...I suspect that the only reason why the BSD license even exists as such at all is actually because other licenses do. In other words, originally there existed a scenario where in software authors' minds, software being devoid of ownership was something known/thought of at an instinctive or barely conscious level. If you look at bsd.port.mk, Jordan Hubbard's statement there is that the file is in the public domain. Not "free as in freedom." Just plain free, in every possible sense of the word, all at once. In Richard Stallman's case, the definition of freedom has become perverted and distorted, and looking at the BSD and some of the Creative Commons license can show us why that is so.
I remember reading another quote:-
"Freedom is the only law that genius knows."
It's also the only law that true genius needs. What we now call FOSS originally came from a place where some abnormally intelligent, deeply spiritual people wrote and saw software as simply one part of an entire world that they wanted to live in; a world where it is understood instinctively that humanity is an intimately connected, genetically related group, and that each additional human being who exists has priceless value as a means of that group being able to express itself in a unique and previously entirely undiscovered way.
Contrast that to the type of vision that groups like Microsoft, WIPO and the RIAA have, and you might begin to understand why the BSD license hasn't become as popular. It is surprising that they tolerate even the GPL, watered down though it is.
I'm not worried about this NSA situation at all as long as they are only recording phone numbers and not any personal information. (Emphasis mine)
/nä-'Ev/
From Merriam-Webster:-
Main Entry: naive
Variant(s): or naïve
Function: adjective
Inflected Form(s): naiver; -est
Etymology: French naïve, feminine of naïf, from Old French, inborn, natural, from Latin nativus native
1 : marked by unaffected simplicity : ARTLESS, INGENUOUS
2 a : deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment; especially : CREDULOUS b : not previously subjected to experimentation or a particular experimental situation (made the test with naive rats); also : not having previously used a particular drug (as marijuana)
3 : SELF-TAUGHT, PRIMITIVE
You refer to other voters as a bunch of sheep, and then admit you voted for Bush simply because you didn't think much of Kerry, in a country where voting is not compulsory.
I'm not going to say anything else...but think about that for a few moments.
a) I'm guessing the practical negative implications of this have not yet begun to materialise. Whenever I hear anyone offer the rationale that "only wrongdoers have anything to worry about," I remind the speaker that it's the government that holds the definition of wrongdoing, (in a legal sense) and who can thus change it. Hence, you might be going about your business, doing something which previously wasn't considered wrong at all, and you'll suddenly get a visit from a government worker wanting you to answer some questions. Hold on...You're not doing anything wrong, right? Well, you see sir, there's been this new legislation passed recently...
;-)
b) People obviously must not have much faith in the pre-existing legal framework...either that, or they're entirely willing to ignore it, which is perhaps even more alarming. The point though is that...hasn't anyone stopped to consider that maybe the reason why wiretapping has been completely illegal up to this point is *because* it's so dangerous? Although it hasn't happened recently, there was a time when laws existed for valid reasons.
Either way though...this is an indication that things are nicely on track for the expected naked coup de tat/subsequent revolution in 2008. Although it may seem unbelievable, as I said above, the negative ramifications of everything Bush has been doing still haven't entirely registered with a good portion of the population yet...they're still not hurting enough. Eventually that will change, however...and when it does, there's going to be complete chaos.
Anyone who thinks Wikipedia isn't self-censoring should study the reversion histories of either the Amway or Richard Stallman articles. It also is simply not true to say that anyone can edit any article in any circumstance. Article editing can be (and is) disabled for individual articles on a routine basis, and such also is not typically done via consensus.
Wikipedia is a great thing...I'm not denying that for a moment. What I do have a problem with however is that rather than concentrating on its' genuine good points, people have this annoying tendency to make positive claims about it which simply aren't true. It is only partially democratic; it certainly isn't entirely.
>Horde still suck
;-)
I've heard this said a lot, and I don't entirely agree with it. My primary character is a Forsaken mage. I consider the Tirisfal Glades area to be extremely atmospheric and as well populated with monsters and quests as any other area of the game that I've seen. Thunder Bluff and Mulgore are also beautiful, and the Barrens are a wonderful approximation of a savannah environment in my mind.
I will agree with anyone that Orgrimmar is probably the single least impressive city in the game, but that is almost to be expected. Blizz's cultural inspiration for the Orcs in particular has always seemed rather confused, to me...somewhere between Klingons and Scotsmen.
>Point in case: yeah, so your new character created on an empty
>server still has no problems. Whop-de-freakin'-do. Big surprise
>that. Mine had no problems after a week either.
What I meant was primarily that none of the *gameplay* issues which I saw with UO are present in WoW. Yes, I've experienced a queue on my resident server now, (Jubei'Thos) and yes, I've also now experienced the joy of Tuesday night. One other problem which I'll admit having is that on my server at least, Alliance players apparently outnumber Horde by at least five or so to one. Is this last issue common to other servers as well?
I'm guessing that your perspective is that it was the ownership of people who'd bought copies of Diablo/Diablo 2.
My own perspective about bnetd though is that Blizzard (and anyone who develops an application or protocol, for that matter) has the right to decide whether to open the source of said application or document the workings of the protocol, or not.
I'm not going to disagree with anyone who says that FOSS is a good thing. It's beneficial in a lot of different ways. What I do have problems with on the other hand is a philosophy which says that people must release everything they produce as FOSS, and that they don't have any right to decide otherwise. It IMHO should be a choice.
I've just started playing WoW a week ago, and my main character reached level 14 this morning. (Male forsaken mage) It is an amazing game...by far the most mature MMORPG I've seen. Virtually none of what I considered flaws in Ultima Online in present here.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and state as I have before that I do not consider Blizzard the evil company that many seem to make them out to be. Yes, they're strict, and yes, they come across as somewhat paranoid with regards to the rules, but given what I remember of the PKs in UO and the Diablo hackers on Battlenet, I believe that Blizzard have reason to feel threatened. The average teenage PK you'll encounter on an MMORPG can without exaggeration be described as completely sociopathic.
The other element of my perspective (and I realise that this one isn't going to go over well with those Slashdot readers who prefer to use Richard Stallman's brain in leiu of their own) is that Blizzard runs the service, and as such, they're completely entitled to set house rules. The user, as always, is likewise entitled to decide whether or not s/he finds said rules agreeable and thus hand over their money.
I also considered (and still consider) Blizzard to have been entirely within their rights to squelch bnetd. I also tend to strongly suspect that that particular project would have been started (and run) by the same type of reflexive Stallmanite fanatics as Andrew Tridgell. Namely people who find the concept of software ownership difficult to tolerate.
I'm also not interested in hearing about how the bnetd coders were contributing to Stallman's divinely sanctioned crusade to save the rest of humanity from the evil corporations. Yes, I do also hold the belief that *some* of said corporations are evil, but I'm definitely not waiting for the FSF attack bots to save me from them...primarily because I believe that the FSF itself has its' own agenda which (in some respects at least) is arguably just as unwholesome as that of said corporations. Stallman isn't any less authoritarian, or any more morally desirable, than anyone else in my opinion.
It just wouldn't be Slashdot if there wasn't some Debian whoring to accompany an article about Linux...it's like the chorus of a song. You can almost set your watch by it. ;)
Repeat after me, kids:-
(After having messed your hair up, injecting some salt water into your eyes for that rabid, bloodshot look, and using a hoarse, wheezing scream for emphasis)
"Debian IS Linux!"
Being honest, I've never actually seen a concrete definition of what the word "community" in the context of Linux actually means.
However, by implication I've tended to suspect that Richard Stallman intended it to refer to his vision of a relatively small, highly insular group of individuals who, while being interested in mutual co-operation within said group, were distrustful at best (and openly contemptuous or hostile at worst) of outsiders. It also seemed to me to refer to a group environment in which a particular belief system/worldview was held, and where there was an expectation that members would rigidly enforce adherence to this worldview among other members.
If this is starting to sound like I'm referring to a cult, then to a degree, I actually think that perhaps I am. This however is merely what I have observed.
I suspect an awareness may be dawning that his star is starting to fade. He's probably trying to cash in while he still can, before he slides into more or less total irrelevance.
To his devotees, Stallman can do no wrong. To the rest of us, he's just one more cult leader. Wasn't the first, won't be the last.
Whenever it's learned on here that someone wants to actually get paid for what they do, they're immediately branded as the spawn of Satan.
I dislike a lot of what corporations do as much as the next person, but do we really need this kneejerk response that anybody who wants to make *any* money at all is declared soulless, ravening evil?
People need to eat, and they generally also want to do a lot of other things...and last I checked, food and most of said other things usually cost money. That has to come from somewhere, and what I really think is wrong is the idea that the only morally legitimate means of earning it is sitting in a cubicle like a battery chicken for eight (or however many more) hours a day.
If you're going to come back at me with the "donation" response as well, don't bother. I'm aware that the only real reason why 98% of the readership of this site believe that making money from software is evil is because Richard Stallman said so...not because they themselves actually have a reason for said belief.
Yes, the corporate rampage in a lot of different areas is a problem...but kneejerk, mindless Communism is too. They're both extremes, and they're both equally undesirable. RMS is as much a destructive fanatic in his own way as Gates or Ballmer are in theirs. Both sides want to remake the world in *their* own image, and to hell with what anybody else wants.
A lot of people here pride themselves on being intellectuals...but sometimes, some of you really don't act like it.
...and smart money says they won't be the last either. However, before them, such cults as Amway, Scientology, and the FSF adopted the tactic of using their Wikipedia article as free PR.
The Amway and Scientology articles are now more or less genuinely neutral; presumably the group representatives there got sick of having to constantly babysit the page. RMS on the other hand has a much easier time of it...he's got a dedicated team of zealots who are willing to wage an endless revert war on his page; nothing even remotely critical of him is allowed.
As I've said, this is one of the main areas in which Wikipedia has problems...and said problems aren't going to go away any time soon.
>Some of us in America would actually prefer news from the BBC. ]
>At least for world news coverage, the Beeb does a far better job
>than American news.
Before around 2001, I would have agreed with that. Then their presenters started worshipping the ground Bush walked on, and became a lot more sympathetic towards their own Prime Minister Wormtounge, as well.
Back in the 70s and 80s, (and presumably earlier) the BBC might have had some degree of journalistic integrity. These days however, they're just like any other big corp...Be nice to the important people, and don't bite the hand that feeds you.
I'd suggest either the original Unreal Tournament, or (if you're feeling a bit more adventurous) UT2004.
.u files.
Given how old the original UT is, that might surprise you a bit...however, it's an extremely capable engine, nearly everything's scriptable, (UnrealScript is a cut down Java) and mapping is infinitely faster and easier than for the Quakes. You've also got an enormous amount of existing code examples available online, in the sense that the source for UnrealScript mods and mutators can be extracted from the
True, they're not open source. However, there's no other package on the planet quite like UnrealED, and so long as you don't want to make money with your project, (which you've said you haven't) Epic don't really mind what you do with it too much.
While in the past I spent a considerable amount of time gnashing my teeth in lamentation over the fact that insects like yourself exist, recently I've learned to console myself by remembering that I
a) Have moved out of my parents' house,
b) Live above ground,
c) Have a girlfriend, and
d) Therefore am not in the position of likely being a lonely, alienated virgin for the rest of my life.
Either get some psychotropics and get the fuck over yourself, my friend...or don't, and live with the consequences.
That, in a single word, is the answer to this particular question.
Most of the Linux users I've seen aren't rude or antisocial because they think they've got a better OS necessarily. (although that can definitely be part of it)
Rather, it's because a very large number of them are afflicted with a neurological profile which has marked tendencies towards overwhelming pedantry, non-mainstream interests, and a general near-complete lack of ability to interact socially with that portion of the human race that actually are normal.
So yeah...it's not so much snobbery, as it is that Linux users genuinely are different, without using politically incorrect terminology. Said difference exists at a neurological and indeed, even genetic, level.
Although my current addiction to gaming means that most of my recent computing has been Windows based, I have long believed and will continue to believe that for the most part, UNIX and its' derivatives genuinely represent the way God intended man to use a computer.
Despite continual advances and new wrinkles being thrown at us in the area of graphical user interfaces, for many tasks the console is still fundamental and without peer where speed is concerned. Microsoft and Apple can crow about their own approaches all they like; UNIX existed before both of them, and its' descendants will exist after those two companies' names have passed out of human memory.
On reading Eric Raymond's The Art of UNIX Programming, I came to realise that that book offered not just a methodology for programming, but for life in general. It also describes the thoughts and philosophies of a group of people who were as pioneering, adventurous, and brilliant as any other in human history, and to whom larger humanity will owe a debt of gratitude for at least the next several hundred years to come.
ISPs could save a LOT of money on bandwidth if they had caching proxy servers.
;) These days I know better than to contact the tech support of any ISP I use, since I've found in virtually every case that I generally know around a hundred times more about a given problem than the person on the other end of the line.
I've been online long enough to be able to remember a time when (in Australia at least, and presumably in the US) ISPs actually did do this. Of course, that was back when ISPs were run by people who actually knew what they were doing; we're going back a long way, here.
ISPs used to be localised small businesses made up of people who were simply a bit more technically inclined than most. These days on the other hand, you'll have local dialin nodes run by the usual large, faceless corporations. They employ legions of dumb kids straight out of high school, and seem to expect XP's wizards to serve as a substitute for training, for the most part. Heaven forbid that anyone they employ would be educated in anything so arcane as hardware installation or networking theory, let alone having experience with a UNIX-based operating system...which of course they *should.* I haven't heard of Squid running on XP...and thus it doesn't get used.
Jimbo's creation isn't anywhere near as freewheeling as he would have people believe. There are bills to pay, (hardware upgrades, bandwidth costs, and so on) and he doesn't want to alienate those who might otherwise be willing to pay them. That includes members of such groups as Amway, and there is also a particularly strict group of thought police attached to the article about Richard Stallman. When the slogan talks about a free encyclopedia which anyone can edit, they should really clarify it by saying that anyone can edit it so long as their edits don't include anything politically incorrect, or which might offend people who would otherwise possibly donate.
The other thing to realise is that the neutral point of view policy is generally applied *extremely* inconsistently. There are very often miniature communities which will attach themselves to various articles, (the GNU/Stallman articles are probably the best example of this that I know of) and they generally have a consensus about what they will or will not allow in an article. Said consensus also doesn't necessarily have anything to do with genuinely factual information, although one hopes that it normally does. I personally believe that the entire idea behind the NPOV policy is broken, simply because it isn't realistically possible. The only real reason why they attempt to maintain it is because they want to try and achieve a level of encyclopedic legitimacy which again, isn't really possible. I also don't believe that not having encyclopedic legitimacy in certain people's minds doesn't detract from Wikipedia's genuine usefulness; especially given that the people who are skeptical about the idea are likely to remain so, and it therefore makes a lot more sense to be realistic about what is or is not possible, rather than maintain something unworkable in order to try and impress people whose opinion is unfavourable anyway.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Although Wikipedia genuinely is extremely valuable when it comes to many topics, politics and people are the two main areas where it is severely flawed, and where given human nature, it probably can't help being flawed.
Wikipedia is as much subject to the Golden Rule as anything else these days; that is, that whoever has the gold makes the rules.