This will be the first SW Movie since they started the re-releases I won't be in line for. Though that's more due to work than a lack of desire to be out there camped in front of the theater. Though my stays (2 days 1 night) were never as long as these guys out in CA, they were long enough to get the most enjoyment out of the experience.
The line is more fun than the movie, by far. Everyone out there is there because they're dorks, nerds, geeks. They enjoy Star Wars, and a film premier is likely one of the few times they get to gather with other fans and geek out about their hobby. It's always a good time with people sitting around playing cards, eating pizza, drinking soda, playing board games (video games one year when the theater owner rolled out a TV on a cart for us to use) etc. Essentially the line ends up being a day or two long party.
So many here love to mock the line goers, but how many of those people have been to a Linux, gaming or hacker convention? How many have gone to some sort of industry conference? It's the same thing. Lots of geeks gathering in one place to talk about the stuff they enjoy.
The line is more fun than the movies ever are. By the time the opening crawl starts on the screen, I've been awake for 2-3 days and soon I'm nodding off. I don't care though cause I know I'm not missing anything, I already experienced the most fun part.
While I won't be in line this year, I will be thinking of my friends back home who will be.
Have you actually played any of their games in the past few years?
-GalCiv beat the pants off of MoO3... one of the best 4x games out in quite a while -Political Machine was a fun budget title that got a TON of press coverage during the election -GalCiv 2 just entered beta and it looks EXTREMELY promising.
I heard Brad hint at how they could possibly pass this off for free. It went something like this title, because it's free and being offered by a stable company (one that isn't dependent on the one title) that the media and general attention it will create will draw more and more people to their sites. Those new eyes will see the other products (Object Desktop, TotalGaming.Net, GalCiv 2 etc...) and then if they like the free game, pick up other products.
The large amount of press generated by The Political Machine last summer did exactly this. People came to Stardock that had never heard of them before. Since then sales of other products have increased and stayed higher than projections.
Stardock is one of the companies to keep an eye on in the next few years. They've got some cool stuff up their sleeves.
If you're a business that specializes in the massive backup or translation of data from one medium to another, you probably want media to last a few years at most. That way, organizations are constantly coming to them with stores of data that they need re-recorded.
Pretty much the only way to make your media last forever is to have it stored in a solid state (like being etched into the surface of a DVD) and then sealed and stored in a moistureless, airless, lightless temperature controlled environment. But with all the talk about self-destructing DVDs and CDs that the recording industries are trying to push, I don't think even that's possible.
CONVERT ALL YOUR DATA INTO BINARY AND THEN LASER ETCH IT INTO GLASS! THEN SANDWICH IT BETWEEN TWO OTHER LAYERS OF GLASS AND HIDE IT ON A MOUNTAINTOP! YOU MUST SAVE YOUR PR0N COLLECTION FOR ALIENS TO DISCOVER AFTER WE'VE BLOWN OURSELVES TO ATOMS!!
This rant was brought to you by the Reynolds Society for Tin Foil Hats... Remember, only Reynolds Wrap brand tin foil can protect you from the strongest of the alien mind-control rays!
Re:I've been seeing the same thing
on
Return of the Mac
·
· Score: 1
You can plug any 2-button USB mouse into a Mac to get the right button functionality. I wish the built-in one would be two button too... but at least we can get it with external mice.
Why does Microsoft have to open up their file format anyway? It's theirs. They built it (yes, based on an open standard but that's like saying anything coded in C must be made open because the C standard is).
That's like saying I built a really cool house, everyone likes the house, everyone wishes they could have a house as cool as mine. Because everyone likes it I should be obligated to let everyone in, let everyone use it when they like. I should have to (in addition of having the building plans on file publicly) give room layouts with furniture, decorations and everything. Did I ever expand the functionality of my house by finishing the basement? Gotta let everyone have that too! I have a monopoly on my house (it being mine and all) and that's not fair to all my neighbors who have houses that aren't quite as cool.
You want Linux market share to grow, right? Well you need to entice people over somehow. Coders you get with making it easy to make the initial transition. Users you get if they can run their old familiar apps on your OS. Develop in.NET and you can release to the three major platforms (Win, Mac, Linux).
I see all sorts of comments about "Why do I need that if I'm running Linux? I'll just write my code in C/C++ and compile natively!" Basically most of the people here lack the ability to step back and see this from a much wider perspective. Mono isn't so much here to help the existing Linux developers develop under Linux better, but to allow Windows developers and Windows software companies to (more) easily make the transition to Linux.
Sure, you still have to rework parts of your.NET code when moving between platforms, but compared to the rewrites that are often necessary with other languages, the time investment is minimal. With Mono you can pretty quickly move your app from Windows, to Linux, to MacOS.
Mono (to me) is more of an outreach project, a bridge like WINE or Cedega to the Windows world. It's a note saying "Hey guys, I know we haven't been on the best terms in the past, but we want to make it as easy as possible for you to come over and pay us a visit on the other side of the OS world. Bring your code with you too if you'd like, we're working on making that work too!"
But this doesn't strike me as a huge issue like it does to so many here.
Amazon is not talking about patenting the idea of a Blog. What they are looking to patent is the idea of attaching "blurbs" from users and other blog sites to specific items in their online catalog. Sort of like comments attached to a story here on Slashdot, or an RSS feed from another site. It even refers to blogs as an external concept it is trying to mimic in the patent itself.
They're combining the power of blogs with their search and customer behavior analysis systems to tie in even more relevant information to any given product they're browsing. This is a step towards having a one-stop site for all retail needs. Think of it as a commercial wiki, where everything related to a shopping item is displayed on a side bar. You like scary movies? Well, there's this cool survival horror video game coming out... Oh, and there's a new one hitting theaters, here are the show times near you. Maybe you'd like to read these related thriller novels. And here's a link to our halloween costume section. Here's what everyone says regarding this item too.
You now have every bit of relevant information to a given product you could ever ask for. This is something that to the best of my knowledge hasn't been done before. They're trying to patent the idea of leveraging these external technologies and concepts and integrating them into their proprietary search and analysis systems to present a new and much deeper experience.
They're not trying to patent Blogs or RSS feeds. You can all take the tinfoil hats off now.
...Developing and implementing an ISP-side content filter that only deals with content coming and going from Utah.
Or ISPs giving up their subscriber base in Utah.
It would be interesting to see companies, as a result of this sort of law, throwing their hands in the air and saying "Screw it, we're outta here" Would Utah then sue them and try and force them to come back?
So, if I think someone is gaining illegal access to my computer while I'm not around, I can't install a keylogger to figure out who it is?
This case is the equivalent of a woman hiding a camera in her own bedroom to catch her husband in the act, only to be told it's inadmissable because they didn't know they were being taped.
There need to be reasonable limits to this sort of stuff. Soon we won't be able to submit any evidence at all that was gathered without the permission of the accused...
"I'm sorry sir, I did not allow you to take that bloody knife covered in my finger prints"
Every MMO has CD keys that are forever associated with a given account. If you wanted to reuse a key you would have to be given the original account and change the bank information for billing purposes. This is no shocker to most people.
How do you expect them to actually release a CD key? The way these games work is you can come back to it later and renew your account if you wish. How can they renew their account if the key has been released for reuse?
The place you bought it from owes you a refund. Most stores I go to now won't buy back any game that has a CD key tied to online play/accounts.
I understand that I can compile C# code across any platform that either has.NET or MONO installed on it. Or any major.NET language. My question is, does MONO extend to ASP.NET and integrating in some way with Apache?
I ask this because I do ASP.NET development where I work, and would like to be able to do some of it on my Powerbook or Linux desktop at home if I need to. I know PHP is the better solution under Linux, and I would prefer to be doing it but it's not a supported product where I work so it's out.
The Paladins have a quest just like you describe right now for their lvl 20-30 hammer, Verigans Fist. It's a great hammer for the level range and a ton of fun to get.
Cluster Computing For Better Sound?
on
iPod Shuffle RAID
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Now that we can do a RAID Array, I want to see someone turn it into a beowulf cluster. Imagine the sound processing power we could harness by chaining 400 iPods together! Music listening would never be the same again!
Ooh, ooh! I know! Setup an Uber iPod (uPod) add in wireless (wiPod? because!). If we got normal iPods with built-in wireless in the future, we could have one hell of a distributed computing network:) Either that or a really expensive geek tracking system
How is a seven year licensing deal "innovative"? What's so innovative about a contract?
Lawyer 1: Ok, I've got this great idea... we'll buy the rigths to Major League Baseball for a period of seven years!
Lawyer 2: Seven years?!!? I've heard of five year deals, even ten year deals... but SEVEN?! That's so far outside the box we'll have to label it as 'innovative' in our press release!
Lawyer 1: What can I say? I'm a visionary. No longer will we be tied to 5 year intervals on licenses... it will liberate the industry from the chains of oppression!
Ok, looking at that example I was blown away with how simple it was from a programming perspective. Now, I've done work in PHP, and I'm now starting on ASP.NET, and the simplicity of Rails is impressive. Now, I know a lot of you are poo-pooing it for a number of reasons for not being technologically robust/complex enough to deserve real geek attention/doesn't walk your dog for you, but think about this from another direction.
How much easier has building a dynamic web page become for a non-geek? MUCH. With minimal programming, and a basic knowledge of HTML, the average web builder can now do something that just a short while ago was needlessly complex and arcane.
Yes, if you're doing any production web app work, you won't rely on the default scaffolds or whatnot, you'll just use them as placeholders/test devices to later replace with more robust code. But if you want to make a quick and dirty "blog" on your web space, or make an online recipie book for mom to use, you no longer need to have a stack of manual print-outs or books telling you how to do it.
With a little more refinement, I think this will do for dynamic pages what the WYSIWYG editor did for web pages in general. (This is based on the assumption that the average user is now more technically saavy than they were 10 years ago when the WWW was blosoming)
... SCO requests all sorts of code to go digging through. If I were IBM, I'd hand them every single line of code they've ever developed. Here you go, have fun, we'll see you in a few years when you've sorted it all out.
Considering SCO doesn't really seem to be doing much aside from churning out lawsuits, they'll blow through what remains of their cash reserves before they actually get to the end of all the code.
Of course they'd probably come back and cry foul saying they couldn't be expected to have the resources to analyze that much information and that the court should order IBM to do the analysis itself. This of course leaves the door open to appeals when IBM finds nothing
"Of course they wouldn't find it! They're the ones looking for it! What do you mean we requested they do the work? Oh, hey! What's that shiney thing over there?" *runs out the door*
I've played for at least a time, just about every major MMO out there. I know exactly why the trend towards instancing and the small-group/single player movement is gaining so much momentum over the old style of MMOs.
We want to *PLAY A GAME*
Now, lets think about that one for a second. For a contemporary example let's look at Star Wars Galaxies (w/o the JTL expansion). It's all about massive numbers of people milling around together. It's a great world simulator, you're in a Star Wars sandbox essentially. The problem? Not much fun to be had in the game unless you invent it yourself. Why? Because it's not a game, it's a simulation.
Lots of games have done an amazing job of creating a great game world to play in, good professions, crafting etc... The problem is they spent so much time developing the great shell and framework that they didn't have time to put in the game elements. So we're all just left to mill about and try and come up with something to do aside from grinding levels.
Instances typically imply short-duration objective based missions for a single group. The experience has a beginning, middle and end. There are objectives so you can "win" and feel you achieved something. Plus, it's a more controlled experience since you get to choose who plays with you and you're not competing with 243,423,422 other people who are camping Mob 486 for UberLOOT Sword of TEH WIN. These experiences are FUN. They are much more like the games we all grew up playing. In most MMOs you're eventually left sitting around going "Ok, what now?" Instances lead you through the experience partially.
I'm tired of developers bemoaning the use of SP aspects in an MMO. They forget that they're not only building social environments, they're supposed to be making games too, and games should be fun and not work.
The "free" argument needs some clarification. I think it's too easy to read these sorts of interviews and come away thinking that "free" means: 1)Source Code 2)The right to do ANYTHING you want with said code
I get the feeling that it's more that the code should be provided, and you can do whatever you like with said code on your own machine, but the original author has the right to limit other rights like distribution or sale. I say this because it simply makes sense to me. To say that if you're going to write a program that is meant to be distributed, you should be required to provide all code and give up all rights of ownership over said code seems to discourage serious development of anything overly complex in anything close to a timely fashion.
Freedom is all well and good, but who would have preferred we never had proprietary software to begin with? How far behind current standards would we be if companies like Apple and Microsoft had not pushed the GUI as they did? Where would modern word processing be if it weren't for WordPerfect and Office? Most free software out there now is working to emulate non-free equivalents. Does the FS/OS community have the vision to pioneer technology instead of immitate?
It's too easy to say "Apple bad! Microsoft immoral! They no give code free!" Dislike the giants all you want, but they accomplished in a few years what has taken us geeks decades to do in our free communities.
There is a place for Free as well as Non-Free software. To say one is inherently superior to another is simply ridiculous. To say one is immoral by it's nature makes you sound like a self-important maniac.
Slashdot Mirror
This coming from an AC on slashdot.
This will be the first SW Movie since they started the re-releases I won't be in line for. Though that's more due to work than a lack of desire to be out there camped in front of the theater. Though my stays (2 days 1 night) were never as long as these guys out in CA, they were long enough to get the most enjoyment out of the experience.
The line is more fun than the movie, by far. Everyone out there is there because they're dorks, nerds, geeks. They enjoy Star Wars, and a film premier is likely one of the few times they get to gather with other fans and geek out about their hobby. It's always a good time with people sitting around playing cards, eating pizza, drinking soda, playing board games (video games one year when the theater owner rolled out a TV on a cart for us to use) etc. Essentially the line ends up being a day or two long party.
So many here love to mock the line goers, but how many of those people have been to a Linux, gaming or hacker convention? How many have gone to some sort of industry conference? It's the same thing. Lots of geeks gathering in one place to talk about the stuff they enjoy.
The line is more fun than the movies ever are. By the time the opening crawl starts on the screen, I've been awake for 2-3 days and soon I'm nodding off. I don't care though cause I know I'm not missing anything, I already experienced the most fun part.
While I won't be in line this year, I will be thinking of my friends back home who will be.
Lighten up, it's one day out of the year, people have fun with it... chill out.
Have you actually played any of their games in the past few years?
-GalCiv beat the pants off of MoO3... one of the best 4x games out in quite a while
-Political Machine was a fun budget title that got a TON of press coverage during the election
-GalCiv 2 just entered beta and it looks EXTREMELY promising.
I heard Brad hint at how they could possibly pass this off for free. It went something like this title, because it's free and being offered by a stable company (one that isn't dependent on the one title) that the media and general attention it will create will draw more and more people to their sites. Those new eyes will see the other products (Object Desktop, TotalGaming.Net, GalCiv 2 etc...) and then if they like the free game, pick up other products.
The large amount of press generated by The Political Machine last summer did exactly this. People came to Stardock that had never heard of them before. Since then sales of other products have increased and stayed higher than projections.
Stardock is one of the companies to keep an eye on in the next few years. They've got some cool stuff up their sleeves.
If you're a business that specializes in the massive backup or translation of data from one medium to another, you probably want media to last a few years at most. That way, organizations are constantly coming to them with stores of data that they need re-recorded.
Pretty much the only way to make your media last forever is to have it stored in a solid state (like being etched into the surface of a DVD) and then sealed and stored in a moistureless, airless, lightless temperature controlled environment. But with all the talk about self-destructing DVDs and CDs that the recording industries are trying to push, I don't think even that's possible.
CONVERT ALL YOUR DATA INTO BINARY AND THEN LASER ETCH IT INTO GLASS! THEN SANDWICH IT BETWEEN TWO OTHER LAYERS OF GLASS AND HIDE IT ON A MOUNTAINTOP! YOU MUST SAVE YOUR PR0N COLLECTION FOR ALIENS TO DISCOVER AFTER WE'VE BLOWN OURSELVES TO ATOMS!!
This rant was brought to you by the Reynolds Society for Tin Foil Hats... Remember, only Reynolds Wrap brand tin foil can protect you from the strongest of the alien mind-control rays!
You can plug any 2-button USB mouse into a Mac to get the right button functionality. I wish the built-in one would be two button too... but at least we can get it with external mice.
Why does Microsoft have to open up their file format anyway? It's theirs. They built it (yes, based on an open standard but that's like saying anything coded in C must be made open because the C standard is).
That's like saying I built a really cool house, everyone likes the house, everyone wishes they could have a house as cool as mine. Because everyone likes it I should be obligated to let everyone in, let everyone use it when they like. I should have to (in addition of having the building plans on file publicly) give room layouts with furniture, decorations and everything. Did I ever expand the functionality of my house by finishing the basement? Gotta let everyone have that too! I have a monopoly on my house (it being mine and all) and that's not fair to all my neighbors who have houses that aren't quite as cool.
You want Linux market share to grow, right? Well you need to entice people over somehow. Coders you get with making it easy to make the initial transition. Users you get if they can run their old familiar apps on your OS. Develop in .NET and you can release to the three major platforms (Win, Mac, Linux).
I see all sorts of comments about "Why do I need that if I'm running Linux? I'll just write my code in C/C++ and compile natively!" Basically most of the people here lack the ability to step back and see this from a much wider perspective. Mono isn't so much here to help the existing Linux developers develop under Linux better, but to allow Windows developers and Windows software companies to (more) easily make the transition to Linux.
.NET code when moving between platforms, but compared to the rewrites that are often necessary with other languages, the time investment is minimal. With Mono you can pretty quickly move your app from Windows, to Linux, to MacOS.
Sure, you still have to rework parts of your
Mono (to me) is more of an outreach project, a bridge like WINE or Cedega to the Windows world. It's a note saying "Hey guys, I know we haven't been on the best terms in the past, but we want to make it as easy as possible for you to come over and pay us a visit on the other side of the OS world. Bring your code with you too if you'd like, we're working on making that work too!"
But this doesn't strike me as a huge issue like it does to so many here.
Amazon is not talking about patenting the idea of a Blog. What they are looking to patent is the idea of attaching "blurbs" from users and other blog sites to specific items in their online catalog. Sort of like comments attached to a story here on Slashdot, or an RSS feed from another site. It even refers to blogs as an external concept it is trying to mimic in the patent itself.
They're combining the power of blogs with their search and customer behavior analysis systems to tie in even more relevant information to any given product they're browsing. This is a step towards having a one-stop site for all retail needs. Think of it as a commercial wiki, where everything related to a shopping item is displayed on a side bar. You like scary movies? Well, there's this cool survival horror video game coming out... Oh, and there's a new one hitting theaters, here are the show times near you. Maybe you'd like to read these related thriller novels. And here's a link to our halloween costume section. Here's what everyone says regarding this item too.
You now have every bit of relevant information to a given product you could ever ask for. This is something that to the best of my knowledge hasn't been done before. They're trying to patent the idea of leveraging these external technologies and concepts and integrating them into their proprietary search and analysis systems to present a new and much deeper experience.
They're not trying to patent Blogs or RSS feeds. You can all take the tinfoil hats off now.
...Developing and implementing an ISP-side content filter that only deals with content coming and going from Utah.
Or ISPs giving up their subscriber base in Utah.
It would be interesting to see companies, as a result of this sort of law, throwing their hands in the air and saying "Screw it, we're outta here" Would Utah then sue them and try and force them to come back?
Except you name a character in your subject line :P
That's like saying "Bugs Bunny............. A character escapes from Elmer Fudd's grasp, but I won't say who"
So, if I think someone is gaining illegal access to my computer while I'm not around, I can't install a keylogger to figure out who it is?
This case is the equivalent of a woman hiding a camera in her own bedroom to catch her husband in the act, only to be told it's inadmissable because they didn't know they were being taped.
There need to be reasonable limits to this sort of stuff. Soon we won't be able to submit any evidence at all that was gathered without the permission of the accused...
"I'm sorry sir, I did not allow you to take that bloody knife covered in my finger prints"
Every MMO has CD keys that are forever associated with a given account. If you wanted to reuse a key you would have to be given the original account and change the bank information for billing purposes. This is no shocker to most people.
How do you expect them to actually release a CD key? The way these games work is you can come back to it later and renew your account if you wish. How can they renew their account if the key has been released for reuse?
The place you bought it from owes you a refund. Most stores I go to now won't buy back any game that has a CD key tied to online play/accounts.
I understand that I can compile C# code across any platform that either has .NET or MONO installed on it. Or any major .NET language. My question is, does MONO extend to ASP.NET and integrating in some way with Apache?
I ask this because I do ASP.NET development where I work, and would like to be able to do some of it on my Powerbook or Linux desktop at home if I need to. I know PHP is the better solution under Linux, and I would prefer to be doing it but it's not a supported product where I work so it's out.
The Paladins have a quest just like you describe right now for their lvl 20-30 hammer, Verigans Fist. It's a great hammer for the level range and a ton of fun to get.
Now that we can do a RAID Array, I want to see someone turn it into a beowulf cluster. Imagine the sound processing power we could harness by chaining 400 iPods together! Music listening would never be the same again!
:) Either that or a really expensive geek tracking system
:)
Ooh, ooh! I know! Setup an Uber iPod (uPod) add in wireless (wiPod? because!). If we got normal iPods with built-in wireless in the future, we could have one hell of a distributed computing network
Useless tech implementations rock
So basically you're saying that All Slashdotters use Operating System XYZ and Browser ABC, except for when they don't. :P
:)
Your statistics have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that, yes, we use computers and web browsers to view web sites.
Bravo
How is a seven year licensing deal "innovative"? What's so innovative about a contract?
Lawyer 1: Ok, I've got this great idea... we'll buy the rigths to Major League Baseball for a period of seven years!
Lawyer 2: Seven years?!!? I've heard of five year deals, even ten year deals... but SEVEN?! That's so far outside the box we'll have to label it as 'innovative' in our press release!
Lawyer 1: What can I say? I'm a visionary. No longer will we be tied to 5 year intervals on licenses... it will liberate the industry from the chains of oppression!
Ok, looking at that example I was blown away with how simple it was from a programming perspective. Now, I've done work in PHP, and I'm now starting on ASP.NET, and the simplicity of Rails is impressive. Now, I know a lot of you are poo-pooing it for a number of reasons for not being technologically robust/complex enough to deserve real geek attention/doesn't walk your dog for you, but think about this from another direction.
How much easier has building a dynamic web page become for a non-geek? MUCH. With minimal programming, and a basic knowledge of HTML, the average web builder can now do something that just a short while ago was needlessly complex and arcane.
Yes, if you're doing any production web app work, you won't rely on the default scaffolds or whatnot, you'll just use them as placeholders/test devices to later replace with more robust code. But if you want to make a quick and dirty "blog" on your web space, or make an online recipie book for mom to use, you no longer need to have a stack of manual print-outs or books telling you how to do it.
With a little more refinement, I think this will do for dynamic pages what the WYSIWYG editor did for web pages in general. (This is based on the assumption that the average user is now more technically saavy than they were 10 years ago when the WWW was blosoming)
... SCO requests all sorts of code to go digging through. If I were IBM, I'd hand them every single line of code they've ever developed. Here you go, have fun, we'll see you in a few years when you've sorted it all out.
Considering SCO doesn't really seem to be doing much aside from churning out lawsuits, they'll blow through what remains of their cash reserves before they actually get to the end of all the code.
Of course they'd probably come back and cry foul saying they couldn't be expected to have the resources to analyze that much information and that the court should order IBM to do the analysis itself. This of course leaves the door open to appeals when IBM finds nothing
"Of course they wouldn't find it! They're the ones looking for it! What do you mean we requested they do the work? Oh, hey! What's that shiney thing over there?" *runs out the door*
I've played for at least a time, just about every major MMO out there. I know exactly why the trend towards instancing and the small-group/single player movement is gaining so much momentum over the old style of MMOs.
We want to *PLAY A GAME*
Now, lets think about that one for a second. For a contemporary example let's look at Star Wars Galaxies (w/o the JTL expansion). It's all about massive numbers of people milling around together. It's a great world simulator, you're in a Star Wars sandbox essentially. The problem? Not much fun to be had in the game unless you invent it yourself. Why? Because it's not a game, it's a simulation.
Lots of games have done an amazing job of creating a great game world to play in, good professions, crafting etc... The problem is they spent so much time developing the great shell and framework that they didn't have time to put in the game elements. So we're all just left to mill about and try and come up with something to do aside from grinding levels.
Instances typically imply short-duration objective based missions for a single group. The experience has a beginning, middle and end. There are objectives so you can "win" and feel you achieved something. Plus, it's a more controlled experience since you get to choose who plays with you and you're not competing with 243,423,422 other people who are camping Mob 486 for UberLOOT Sword of TEH WIN. These experiences are FUN. They are much more like the games we all grew up playing. In most MMOs you're eventually left sitting around going "Ok, what now?" Instances lead you through the experience partially.
I'm tired of developers bemoaning the use of SP aspects in an MMO. They forget that they're not only building social environments, they're supposed to be making games too, and games should be fun and not work.
The "free" argument needs some clarification. I think it's too easy to read these sorts of interviews and come away thinking that "free" means:
1)Source Code
2)The right to do ANYTHING you want with said code
I get the feeling that it's more that the code should be provided, and you can do whatever you like with said code on your own machine, but the original author has the right to limit other rights like distribution or sale. I say this because it simply makes sense to me. To say that if you're going to write a program that is meant to be distributed, you should be required to provide all code and give up all rights of ownership over said code seems to discourage serious development of anything overly complex in anything close to a timely fashion.
Freedom is all well and good, but who would have preferred we never had proprietary software to begin with? How far behind current standards would we be if companies like Apple and Microsoft had not pushed the GUI as they did? Where would modern word processing be if it weren't for WordPerfect and Office? Most free software out there now is working to emulate non-free equivalents. Does the FS/OS community have the vision to pioneer technology instead of immitate?
It's too easy to say "Apple bad! Microsoft immoral! They no give code free!" Dislike the giants all you want, but they accomplished in a few years what has taken us geeks decades to do in our free communities.
There is a place for Free as well as Non-Free software. To say one is inherently superior to another is simply ridiculous. To say one is immoral by it's nature makes you sound like a self-important maniac.
Netscape is based on Firefox, which is based on Mozilla.... which is based on Netscape.
So Netscape is now loosely based on Netscape?
I think this is one of those puzzles that if anyone figures out the answer, the Universe will cease to be.
So we'll have a new Netscape browser based on Firefox which is based on Mozilla which is in turn based on Netscape...
So Netscape is now based loosely on Netscape.
It's a logical infinite loop. Next you'll hear about people being their own fathers.