I'll be interested to see this film to see if it confirms my theory that the rise of the computer has incurred the death of character in modern animation.
I remember when I was a child, watching such classics as Bambi and Dumbo, which were lovingly handcrafted by teams of patient animators.
Nowadays, I feel that the computer has removed the character, if not perhaps the personality, of these old classics. With the ability to easily knock up an animation that modern technology brings, doesn't the ease bring a certain lack of attention to detail?
I just feel that modern animations, such as Toy Story and the like, lack the interest of the old, and have a patina of artificiality. Some would say that this is because of soulless modern commercialism, and this may be true, but it is also, IMO, sue to the very techniques used in modern animation.
Give me old-fashioned hand crafted efforts any time.
A language designed for compatability across all platforms, without any hassles at all with portability. Of course, the problem with Java is that it is slow, but there is no reason why specialized VM's can't be built for the next generation of consoles. And current VM's are getting faster all the time - the other day I played a 3d game on my Linux box that ran fairly fast.
It seems to me that it would be easier to go forward into the ever-increasing Java world than backward into the Amiga world, but of course I am not an expert. Why use a new OS for these purposes when the tools are already there?
You are quite correct - I did stray off topic. However, that was not because I am a troll, but rather because I was posting as an AC. It is difficult to keep ones mind on the salient points when one is not fearing the wrath of the moderaters.
People do indeed come closer through email communication. I for example have gotten 2 internships and 80% of my freelance work through email.
How ironic that your e-mail is Spam protected! You tell me you do not fear spammers, and that they do not affect you, and at the same time use an obvious cover e-mail address to illustrate your point! I find this most amusing.
True, e-mail can be a good vehicle for making friends, as I have found out recently, but I fear it is in danger of being rendered useless as a communicative medium by the sheer signal to noise ratio that it suffers from. I know I would not give out my real e-mail address here on/., and my Hotmail address is swamped by superfluous nonsense.
For myself, I find that 90% and up of my time sorting e-mails is spent sifting through piles of garbage. And I would love to sign up for informative newsletters and the like, but I cannot be assured that the spammers will not be sold the information. The problem in this regard is that e-mail is cheap.
E-mail is like an ever growing organism. Every time you send an e-mail, you are sending the information that will allow you to be contacted. The small world theory means that it is almost impossible to keep an e-mail address secret.
Anyway, back off-topic, I for one know you exist, Perdida, and I am happy to converse with you at any time.
The problem with e-mail is the ability it gives to send many millions of e-mails to lots of people. I like e-mail, but what is the point when I have to be all paranoid about my address? I can't let anyone but the most trusted members of my family know about it.
While e-mail is good in some circumstances, such as for business, I feel it is not a good medium in a social sense. The lack of trustworthyness and the dilution of feeling that is a result of mass e-mailing does not lend itself to mass communication, I have found.
How can you beat the handwritten letter for the personal touch?
Moores law renders it irrelevant, IMO. Okay, so ther might be setbacks for a while, and the market may remain stationary, but with computer power doubling every 12 months it doesn't matter. This is what I predict:
1) In ten years all games will be written in Java. Computers will be fast enough to handle it, and this will render porting problems obsolete.
2)The market will be bigger, as China and India will be superpowers. This will render the crowded marketplace idea obsolete.
3)The film industry will be no more, as it will be subsumed into the games industry. This will bring gaming to the mainstream.
It is well known that the Computer games industry now outgrosses the Film Industry.
Soon, the two industries shall merge, and actors shall be simulated on computers. Who shall our heroes be then?
Games Programmers, that's who. Just like we now talk of Bradd Pitt and Alfred Hitchcock in Hushed tones, soon we shall be talking of hotshot young games programmers in the same reverential way.
What impact will this have on the industry as a whole? The best programmers will all be working in the frivolous games industry for the adulation and respect (not to mention women, of course), so won't Linux and the mainstream applications that are our flesh and blood suffer?
And I'm sure a lot of you are too. Remember what he said before Windows 2000 came out? It was 60000 bugs this and overdue schedule that, and now it's out without any problems at all.
I think the problem is that he is a hangover from the immature days of Linux. But now that Linux is growing up and becoming commercially valid, isn't it time that its spokesmen grew up as well? Imagine if MS spokesmen spent their time with unfouded attacks on Linux. They don't - which is a sign of self confidens and maturity.
It's time for RMS & ESR to behave in the same fashion, IMO.
I would have thought that as the army is security paranoid, they would not install an open source OS on truely mission critical devices.
Linux Security is good for businesses, but in the army it's different - their enemies have resources and will keep what they develop a secret, before deploying it once.
Could the army's actions be for funding reasons, rather than security reasons? I am British, so I am not very familiar with American politics, but I would have thought that under the Republicans the Army would have more money.
If someone could clear this up for me I'd be most obliged - I am not very technically literate.
I'm not saying that it is a good thing in general for a company to dictate standards. However, at the birth of a new industry it can often be a good idea. Look at AT&T - they made the phone network what it is today by dominating the early industry and setting the standards, both nationally and internationally.
Another example might be the large rail companies of the 19th century - they dominated the industrial and social landscape, and by their nature were monopolies. However, it was an incipient industry, rail transport, and they set the standards and made it what it is today.
I just think - without necessarily believing it - that there might be a good thing to say about MS in this regard as well. In 100 years time, I would bet that detached historians will have some good things to say about MS. You have to take a step back and consider it from a more removed perspective, thats all.
Sure they got Java and turned it into a standard, but that was before the beast had awoken. Now MS is pushing C# and it's standards all over the shop.
The simple fact is that MS have the marketshare, on the client browser side at least. They can pretty much dictate the standard without having to worry about fleas like Sun.
This is just the real world - as long as MS's standards are open and not proprietry I have no particular problem with it. In a way it's good that at this time, the birth of the Net, there is a behemoth who can dictate common standards. Without MS I fear the Net would degenerate into conflicting and incompatible rulesets.
Yeah, Gates is well known to help the needy-- those that need Ferraris, and multi-million dollar homes, and....
He sure is - that's why he recently gave a Billion buckaroos away - making your point irrelevant.
Motivation is irrelevant, also. Everybody is selfish, that is natural. It is the pressures of society that make people behave in an altruistic manner. Altruism is just a form of selfishness, almost always.
But it doesn't matter, the fact is that he gives *lots* of his own hard earned cash away.
That's why it makes me laugh to see everyone here moan about MS's employment practices. They are angry because it affects *them*, when, if they were truely altruistic, they would be worrying about the truely deprived.
It's not so much that it surprises me, it just annoys and disappoints me, that's all. But it's human nature.
The bottom line in any employer-employee contract is that the employee is free to leave at any time. If he does not, then he is not being 'abused' by the company for which he works. All whining about abuse of employees etc is besides the point entirely, IMO. The simple fact is that these employees have a choice, and they have chosen to work for Microsoft.
In any case, these are computer programmers and technical types - it's not as though they are working making footballs in the third world for tuppence happeny a day, is it? Doesn't the geek community have better things to worry about than this?
We should take a leaf out of Bill Gates book, and help the truly deprived, and not scratch our own backs here.
[I realise that last comment is controversial - it mentions Bill Gates! - but I said it to shock everyone into thinking for once, and stop being emotional and selfish]
You are absolutely correct. Although there is water on the moon, it is innaccesable. It would be much easier to get it from Jupiter, obviously. 120 million miles of space is a much smaller barrier than 1 mile of rock. I don't want there to be the same barrier between us though, so please reply and tell me what you think of this.
You are describing two worst case scenarios. The first is that Thompson drive OV underground. You are correct that they cannot stop it being developed or distributed, but they can stop it being used in the real world: in all the music download sites, commercial players etc etc
The other is effectivel that OV version 2 is created. But who's to say that they won't do the same with it? This is not justice we are talking about, it's the law, and the man with the money is the man who can bend it to his will.
Remember, nobody would remember the good samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money, too.
Considering Ogg Vorbis is GPL, you'd think they'd already know.
They very probably do. Of course, that's not to say that Ogg V does use mp3 technology, but it is certainly possible that it has been influenced by it.
What we are looking at now is a commercial company deciding to go after a defenseless GPL project. How will Ogg V survive? They don't have any resources or money or lawyers, do they? In the real world, that's what it takes to survive, and Thompson's know it.
Perhaps it would be good for Ogg V to get a commercial 'Big Daddy' that will defend it under the GPL.
But I fear that would be impossible. They would only defend it if they owned it, of course, or if they had some power over it.
If Ogg V is reliscensed under a more commercially friendly license, such as MozPL, It may survive.
What do you want more? Your principles or Survival? That is what it comes down to, I fear.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Re:Ancient games should not be copyright released
on
Warez and Abandonware
·
· Score: 1
Why is Elite any more a rogue brand because you can still get it on an ftp site that it is if you can't?
Simple. Commercial companies like maximum control over their brands, whether that's logical or not is irrelevant.
They will not release updated versions of games with the same name as competitors. Imagine there were a dozen versions of Quake, all by different companies? In the end, games companies are in a service industry, and image and marketing are all.
Note, I am not saying that ancient games should not be distributed freely, just that the companies should feel like they have control.
That way we can have games like Elite:3000 or whatever released, thus adhering to tradition and making me feel all nostalgic;-)
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Ancient games should not be copyright released
on
Warez and Abandonware
·
· Score: 4
The reason I say this is that if they were, modern games companies would not release updated versions of these games.
Imagine Elite for the BBC Master was released from copyright. Modern versions of Elite would not then be made, at least not with the Elite name; companies would shy from associating with a rogue brand. Look at what happened to Doom.
It's not so much that the style of game would die; there will always be better updated clones. It's just that games of the same name would not be released. I'm quite nostalgic, and like to see games with the proper name. It gives the develepors a tradition to uphold and may even improve quality.
It's best all round if the games companies just turn a blind eye to pirating of ancient games, in the long run, I think.
There's no "global maxima" associated with the concept of "better"
I never suggested there was.
why invoke the concept of "winning", when you're not necessarily pitting the different flavors head to head?
Well, it's complex. Consider Gnome & KDE - they are in competition in the most general sense. It may be that for some specific purposes, one can do something that the other cannot, and in these instances there is no competition. But when that occurs, I would suggest that the time has come for a code fork, or for some other flavour to be modified so it can do the same task.
I can't believe that it would be good for Linux or BSD to have a completely minimalist overall code base, with one program for each task. That would sterilize it.
You are assuming that if there is only one version of a program, then that is somehow simpler. If there are two versions, then the better one will win.
'Better' meaning:it has more features, or it does it job faster/more efficiently, or the program is smaller, or any one of a million reasons.
Suppose there were only one version of Linux, or only one version of BSD. How would you know that the codebase was at its best? Having competitors to steal from and copy is no bad thing, IMO.
You seem to be saying that there should be only one model of car, the Ford Model T, and only as long as its black.
I think that having many different models is good for the end user and good for the quality of the models that get produced.
In Linux land, it appears that projects fork for financial reasons. In BSD land, it appears that the forks that have happened
were purely political reasons. I don't know what will happen. It's been 5 years since the last fork in the BSD camp. Why
are you guys so fork paranoid? Do you want everyone to vote for the same political party, too?
I think he is totally correct with this point. The point of a codefork is that you end up with two variants, only one of which, in the long term, will survive (usually). It leads to a sort of Darwinian survival of the fittest, and improves the overall code base in the long term as well as giving people options - they can mould their distro to their needs. I have often wondered why the Linux people are so scared of code forks also - could it be because they look back at the Unix wars of the eighties and shudder? This would suggest that the BSD'ers have not inherited the UNIX philosophy to the same degree as the Linux community - that may give them more freedom.
I am not suggesting that forks be encouraged, though, rather that people stop whining when they occur, and recognise them as an opportunity.
Perhaps forks will not be a good thing for Linux in ten years or so, but given that it is presently a sort of 'primordial ooze', and very creative, I do not think it is bad thing for the moment.
I think the body can anylise the situation and pass Laws or guidelines. Everybody has to obey the law - it's a simple and effective deterrant.
Also, a government body would be an excellent focal point of ideas and possible solutions. It would bring those who want to seek a solution together, and give them a voice and some muscle.
I have long been fascinated by the strange relation between fantasy fiction and computer nerds. Why is this?
I would guess that it is because in their daily life, the computer nerd is very logical, indeed Spock like, and generally fits the INTP Myers Brigg personality profile (INTP = Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving). They also find it difficult to relate socially with other people, and indeed resort to usenet, IRC, weblogs etc such is their secret hunger for socialisation.
I think that fantasy allows an escape from these logical and social bindings. The computer nerds are free at last to let their imaginations soar upwards to the high plains of fantasy, and the roleplaying elements of D&D allow for socilisation as well.
Indeed, it has been known for some to become so entranced and invloved that they refuse to come out of it, which can become unhealthy. I have personally known two such people, and one of them had to be treated by a psychiatrist.
Still, in moderate amounts, I think that fantasy, D&D, and the like are very healthy pursuits for a nerd, and may give hime confidence in the wider world. As long as he is old enough to deal with the reality confusion that in depth play can sometimes engender, I have no problem with it.
Keep in mind those books were primarily written before the open source revolution or the authors had no feeling with this underground development and philosophies took ground and saw themselves find way into the hearts of many more.
If you think the Open Source revolution makes one whit of difference to business practice you are utterly mistaken. Business practice has been fundamentally the same since Adam Smith.
I can bet you that the CO of Red Hat has sleepless nights worrying his market share and threats from SuSE, Corel, and the rest. The motivations are the same, the tactics are the same, the fears are the same.
As I say in another post, it's no use saying that Linux works and the OSS business model works and expecting the real world to come knocking at your door. Linux has to change to fit the world, not the other way around, if it is to be successful. Anything else is arrogance and wishful thinking.
Companies expect support. They expect their problems to be fixed for them. It's no use saying:"But you can fix it yourself" - you have to give them the support, right or wrong.
Of course, that is exactly what Red Hat, SuSE and the rest are doing; they are in the real worls of commerce. But can they support large 100k unit installs? I doubt it, and so do they, I would think. So if they want a piece of that action, they are going to have to grow. How do you do that? By taking away market share from your competitors, taking over your competitors, etc. I would say the unification of the Linux Distro commerce world is inevitable.
You appear to be asking for the impossible. If Linux is to be successful, it will have to change to fit the pressures of the real world, nomatter how flawed the real world is. You appear to be asking for the real world to change its ways to fit Linux. Such an arrogant attitude will only cause Linux's downfall.
The Linux community needs to ask "Why is Microsoft so successful?" and then try to emulate those aspects of Microsofts business strategies that do so.
I'm not saying that the community should sacrifice its ideals though, just that it will need to grow up a little, if you like.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember when I was a child, watching such classics as Bambi and Dumbo, which were lovingly handcrafted by teams of patient animators.
Nowadays, I feel that the computer has removed the character, if not perhaps the personality, of these old classics. With the ability to easily knock up an animation that modern technology brings, doesn't the ease bring a certain lack of attention to detail?
I just feel that modern animations, such as Toy Story and the like, lack the interest of the old, and have a patina of artificiality. Some would say that this is because of soulless modern commercialism, and this may be true, but it is also, IMO, sue to the very techniques used in modern animation.
Give me old-fashioned hand crafted efforts any time.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
A language designed for compatability across all platforms, without any hassles at all with portability. Of course, the problem with Java is that it is slow, but there is no reason why specialized VM's can't be built for the next generation of consoles. And current VM's are getting faster all the time - the other day I played a 3d game on my Linux box that ran fairly fast.
It seems to me that it would be easier to go forward into the ever-increasing Java world than backward into the Amiga world, but of course I am not an expert. Why use a new OS for these purposes when the tools are already there?
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
You are quite correct - I did stray off topic. However, that was not because I am a troll, but rather because I was posting as an AC. It is difficult to keep ones mind on the salient points when one is not fearing the wrath of the moderaters.
People do indeed come closer through email communication. I for example have gotten 2 internships and 80% of my freelance work through email.
How ironic that your e-mail is Spam protected! You tell me you do not fear spammers, and that they do not affect you, and at the same time use an obvious cover e-mail address to illustrate your point! I find this most amusing.
True, e-mail can be a good vehicle for making friends, as I have found out recently, but I fear it is in danger of being rendered useless as a communicative medium by the sheer signal to noise ratio that it suffers from. I know I would not give out my real e-mail address here on /., and my Hotmail address is swamped by superfluous nonsense.
For myself, I find that 90% and up of my time sorting e-mails is spent sifting through piles of garbage. And I would love to sign up for informative newsletters and the like, but I cannot be assured that the spammers will not be sold the information. The problem in this regard is that e-mail is cheap.
E-mail is like an ever growing organism. Every time you send an e-mail, you are sending the information that will allow you to be contacted. The small world theory means that it is almost impossible to keep an e-mail address secret.
Anyway, back off-topic, I for one know you exist, Perdida, and I am happy to converse with you at any time.
I am your friend too,
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
While e-mail is good in some circumstances, such as for business, I feel it is not a good medium in a social sense. The lack of trustworthyness and the dilution of feeling that is a result of mass e-mailing does not lend itself to mass communication, I have found.
How can you beat the handwritten letter for the personal touch?
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
1) In ten years all games will be written in Java. Computers will be fast enough to handle it, and this will render porting problems obsolete.
2)The market will be bigger, as China and India will be superpowers. This will render the crowded marketplace idea obsolete.
3)The film industry will be no more, as it will be subsumed into the games industry. This will bring gaming to the mainstream.
Exciting times are ahead, my friends.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Soon, the two industries shall merge, and actors shall be simulated on computers. Who shall our heroes be then?
Games Programmers, that's who. Just like we now talk of Bradd Pitt and Alfred Hitchcock in Hushed tones, soon we shall be talking of hotshot young games programmers in the same reverential way.
What impact will this have on the industry as a whole? The best programmers will all be working in the frivolous games industry for the adulation and respect (not to mention women, of course), so won't Linux and the mainstream applications that are our flesh and blood suffer?
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
I think the problem is that he is a hangover from the immature days of Linux. But now that Linux is growing up and becoming commercially valid, isn't it time that its spokesmen grew up as well? Imagine if MS spokesmen spent their time with unfouded attacks on Linux. They don't - which is a sign of self confidens and maturity.
It's time for RMS & ESR to behave in the same fashion, IMO.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Linux Security is good for businesses, but in the army it's different - their enemies have resources and will keep what they develop a secret, before deploying it once.
Could the army's actions be for funding reasons, rather than security reasons? I am British, so I am not very familiar with American politics, but I would have thought that under the Republicans the Army would have more money.
If someone could clear this up for me I'd be most obliged - I am not very technically literate.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Another example might be the large rail companies of the 19th century - they dominated the industrial and social landscape, and by their nature were monopolies. However, it was an incipient industry, rail transport, and they set the standards and made it what it is today.
I just think - without necessarily believing it - that there might be a good thing to say about MS in this regard as well. In 100 years time, I would bet that detached historians will have some good things to say about MS. You have to take a step back and consider it from a more removed perspective, thats all.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
The simple fact is that MS have the marketshare, on the client browser side at least. They can pretty much dictate the standard without having to worry about fleas like Sun.
This is just the real world - as long as MS's standards are open and not proprietry I have no particular problem with it. In a way it's good that at this time, the birth of the Net, there is a behemoth who can dictate common standards. Without MS I fear the Net would degenerate into conflicting and incompatible rulesets.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
He sure is - that's why he recently gave a Billion buckaroos away - making your point irrelevant.
Motivation is irrelevant, also. Everybody is selfish, that is natural. It is the pressures of society that make people behave in an altruistic manner. Altruism is just a form of selfishness, almost always.
But it doesn't matter, the fact is that he gives *lots* of his own hard earned cash away.
That's why it makes me laugh to see everyone here moan about MS's employment practices. They are angry because it affects *them*, when, if they were truely altruistic, they would be worrying about the truely deprived.
It's not so much that it surprises me, it just annoys and disappoints me, that's all. But it's human nature.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
In any case, these are computer programmers and technical types - it's not as though they are working making footballs in the third world for tuppence happeny a day, is it? Doesn't the geek community have better things to worry about than this?
We should take a leaf out of Bill Gates book, and help the truly deprived, and not scratch our own backs here.
[I realise that last comment is controversial - it mentions Bill Gates! - but I said it to shock everyone into thinking for once, and stop being emotional and selfish]
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
You are absolutely correct. Although there is water on the moon, it is innaccesable. It would be much easier to get it from Jupiter, obviously. 120 million miles of space is a much smaller barrier than 1 mile of rock. I don't want there to be the same barrier between us though, so please reply and tell me what you think of this.
Forever Yours,
KTB
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
The other is effectivel that OV version 2 is created. But who's to say that they won't do the same with it? This is not justice we are talking about, it's the law, and the man with the money is the man who can bend it to his will.
Remember, nobody would remember the good samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money, too.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
They very probably do. Of course, that's not to say that Ogg V does use mp3 technology, but it is certainly possible that it has been influenced by it.
What we are looking at now is a commercial company deciding to go after a defenseless GPL project. How will Ogg V survive? They don't have any resources or money or lawyers, do they? In the real world, that's what it takes to survive, and Thompson's know it.
Perhaps it would be good for Ogg V to get a commercial 'Big Daddy' that will defend it under the GPL.
But I fear that would be impossible. They would only defend it if they owned it, of course, or if they had some power over it.
If Ogg V is reliscensed under a more commercially friendly license, such as MozPL, It may survive.
What do you want more? Your principles or Survival? That is what it comes down to, I fear.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Simple. Commercial companies like maximum control over their brands, whether that's logical or not is irrelevant.
They will not release updated versions of games with the same name as competitors. Imagine there were a dozen versions of Quake, all by different companies? In the end, games companies are in a service industry, and image and marketing are all.
Note, I am not saying that ancient games should not be distributed freely, just that the companies should feel like they have control.
That way we can have games like Elite:3000 or whatever released, thus adhering to tradition and making me feel all nostalgic ;-)
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
Imagine Elite for the BBC Master was released from copyright. Modern versions of Elite would not then be made, at least not with the Elite name; companies would shy from associating with a rogue brand. Look at what happened to Doom.
It's not so much that the style of game would die; there will always be better updated clones. It's just that games of the same name would not be released. I'm quite nostalgic, and like to see games with the proper name. It gives the develepors a tradition to uphold and may even improve quality.
It's best all round if the games companies just turn a blind eye to pirating of ancient games, in the long run, I think.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
I never suggested there was.
why invoke the concept of "winning", when you're not necessarily pitting the different flavors head to head?
Well, it's complex. Consider Gnome & KDE - they are in competition in the most general sense. It may be that for some specific purposes, one can do something that the other cannot, and in these instances there is no competition. But when that occurs, I would suggest that the time has come for a code fork, or for some other flavour to be modified so it can do the same task.
I can't believe that it would be good for Linux or BSD to have a completely minimalist overall code base, with one program for each task. That would sterilize it.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
You are assuming that if there is only one version of a program, then that is somehow simpler. If there are two versions, then the better one will win.
'Better' meaning:it has more features, or it does it job faster/more efficiently, or the program is smaller, or any one of a million reasons.
Suppose there were only one version of Linux, or only one version of BSD. How would you know that the codebase was at its best? Having competitors to steal from and copy is no bad thing, IMO.
You seem to be saying that there should be only one model of car, the Ford Model T, and only as long as its black.
I think that having many different models is good for the end user and good for the quality of the models that get produced.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
I think he is totally correct with this point. The point of a codefork is that you end up with two variants, only one of which, in the long term, will survive (usually). It leads to a sort of Darwinian survival of the fittest, and improves the overall code base in the long term as well as giving people options - they can mould their distro to their needs. I have often wondered why the Linux people are so scared of code forks also - could it be because they look back at the Unix wars of the eighties and shudder? This would suggest that the BSD'ers have not inherited the UNIX philosophy to the same degree as the Linux community - that may give them more freedom.
I am not suggesting that forks be encouraged, though, rather that people stop whining when they occur, and recognise them as an opportunity.
Perhaps forks will not be a good thing for Linux in ten years or so, but given that it is presently a sort of 'primordial ooze', and very creative, I do not think it is bad thing for the moment.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
I think the body can anylise the situation and pass Laws or guidelines. Everybody has to obey the law - it's a simple and effective deterrant.
Also, a government body would be an excellent focal point of ideas and possible solutions. It would bring those who want to seek a solution together, and give them a voice and some muscle.
Just my opinion, anyway.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
I would guess that it is because in their daily life, the computer nerd is very logical, indeed Spock like, and generally fits the INTP Myers Brigg personality profile (INTP = Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving). They also find it difficult to relate socially with other people, and indeed resort to usenet, IRC, weblogs etc such is their secret hunger for socialisation.
I think that fantasy allows an escape from these logical and social bindings. The computer nerds are free at last to let their imaginations soar upwards to the high plains of fantasy, and the roleplaying elements of D&D allow for socilisation as well.
Indeed, it has been known for some to become so entranced and invloved that they refuse to come out of it, which can become unhealthy. I have personally known two such people, and one of them had to be treated by a psychiatrist.
Still, in moderate amounts, I think that fantasy, D&D, and the like are very healthy pursuits for a nerd, and may give hime confidence in the wider world. As long as he is old enough to deal with the reality confusion that in depth play can sometimes engender, I have no problem with it.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
If you think the Open Source revolution makes one whit of difference to business practice you are utterly mistaken. Business practice has been fundamentally the same since Adam Smith.
I can bet you that the CO of Red Hat has sleepless nights worrying his market share and threats from SuSE, Corel, and the rest. The motivations are the same, the tactics are the same, the fears are the same.
As I say in another post, it's no use saying that Linux works and the OSS business model works and expecting the real world to come knocking at your door. Linux has to change to fit the world, not the other way around, if it is to be successful. Anything else is arrogance and wishful thinking.
Companies expect support. They expect their problems to be fixed for them. It's no use saying:"But you can fix it yourself" - you have to give them the support, right or wrong.
Of course, that is exactly what Red Hat, SuSE and the rest are doing; they are in the real worls of commerce. But can they support large 100k unit installs? I doubt it, and so do they, I would think. So if they want a piece of that action, they are going to have to grow. How do you do that? By taking away market share from your competitors, taking over your competitors, etc. I would say the unification of the Linux Distro commerce world is inevitable.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
The Linux community needs to ask "Why is Microsoft so successful?" and then try to emulate those aspects of Microsofts business strategies that do so.
I'm not saying that the community should sacrifice its ideals though, just that it will need to grow up a little, if you like.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.