Yes, you communist nazi's, if you do work, you should get paid for it. [...] Those who go GPL and they go "dude, I have no income!! But I have a penguin sticker!!" yeah, I hope that Penguin sticker gets you chicks because it ain't puttin' dinner on the table..
In case you did not notice, selling mods to the OS is NOT Google's business. They are earning their money from advertising and doing just fine. Giving away a few enhancements to Linux will hardly be visible in their financial results.
Concerning the SCO business, if you follow the news at Groklaw it becomes increasingly clear that SCO's case does NOT look good. SCO can consider itself lucky if it reaches a settlement that allows it to survive. So I would not worry about that angle anymore.
Pay for SuSE? What do you get when you purchase a boxed set from SuSE? Bootable CDs for easy installation. Last time I checked, FTP was not quite as comfortable. Of course, this is supposed to change with Open SuSE, where ISOs will be available.
This said, I don't mind spending some money on the boxed set, SuSE developers need to eat too. But I won't buy a new set every three months (last one I bought was SuSE 9.1). So Open SuSE might find it's way to me as download.
But seriously, many applications rely on the IE engine being available. So if WINE wants to run these, it needs some equivalent that duplicates the API. The rendered screens might still look slightly different because Gecko != IE, but at least the apps will work.
Being a programmer myself, I find Joels blog quite worthwile to read. Many of his ideas match my own experience, which indicates that he usually knows what he's talking about. Others are new to me, and worth thinking about. Sometimes I disagree, but that tends to on a philosophical level rather than on hard facts. So even where I think Joel is wrong, I see no reason to consider him outright incompetent.
A "directive" is a decision by the European council of ministers and the EU parliament about how the EU member states have to shape their national law. While a directive is not a law by itself, member states have to adopt it or they will be in violation of the EU treaty.
A few words about the actors in this game: -The council of ministers consists of representatives of the member states' governments. Usually ministers;-). As the example of the German representative shows, they sometimes vote against the explicit wishes of their countries' parliament. -The EU parliament is directly elected by the citizens of the member states, in a EU-wide election.
The process of creating a EU directive: Only the council of ministers can propose a new directive. The parliament can propose changes, but if the council insists on its version of the directive, the parliament can only reject the directive completely. This also requires an absolute majority of the members of parliament, so a divided or not fully present parliament will usually be unable to stop a directive.
Obviously, this arrangement gives the council of ministers more power in directive-making than the EU parliament. I believe that this is undermining the checks and balances a proper democracy should have, but the parliaments of the EU member states seemed to have no problem ratifying the treaty that established these terms. The "Enabling Act" of 1933 comes to mind:-(
How is it used for DRM? It can't be done today. They way it would be used, sometimes in the future, is to ship the chip with a unique key pre-installed in it, and with a certificate from the manufacturer on that key. Then the BIOS and OS get enhanced to do a "trusted boot"...
The BIOS part is the one I am slightly worried about. As soon as mainboards come with a BIOS that insists on booting only an "attested" OS, Open Source users will have a problem. Something to look out for when buying hardware in the future.
And of course while they are at it they can lock out bootleg Windows licenses forever, win-win for them. And if not outright outlaw Linux, at least make sure only generic whitebox motherboards from Taiwan run it. Assuming your scenario comes true, I guess the generic whitebox motherboards from Taiwan will still run both Linux and bootleg Windows licenses, because they are available without any TCPA. Dell and HP will lose the share of the geek market they have now (which I suspect is small enough anyway). Small shops that build PCs on the whitebox motherboards will grab some marketshare from half-geeks that don't insist on building their own, but still want to use Linux.
The only real danger would be legislation that mandates a form of TCPA that blocks Open Source operating systems. Watch out for that and support the EFF if necessary.
3) Fill hard drive with plenty of porn. Everyone looking at the contents will assume they just caught a lazy, porn-addicted nerd. No further analysis will happen;-)
You and grandparent are both halfway right: Microsoft certainly has some good software, but they also are "overprotective of their market" to the point where they tend to use illegal methods. That is where grandparent has a point. And that overprotectiveness makes it very unlikely that we will ever see a GPLed Open Source Windows. Because it would make it much easier to compete in the market for operating systems that can run Windows applications. To be more specific: -The Wine project would make rapid progress. Partly by copying code, partly by the availability of the source code to study (in areas where direct copying does not help them). -Soon every Linux distribution, and maybe BSD too, would come with the ability to run almost any Windows application.
But I don't want to get into that, it was your statement that "I don't care if small inventors can no longer afford to apply for a patent---much of the innovation seems to come from megacorps anyway...."
There is some truth in this, but you fail to mention that a deluge of patents also makes it hard for the small guy to stay in business. Because if there are patents on every imaginable trivial thing, he will either be hard pressed to avoid all of them, or he risks to be eventually sued by an aggressive patent holder.
Now progress is only promoted by patents if the public gets something that the inventor would not give away without being rewarded with a patent. Usually, that something is a description of how to implement the invention. That inventors would love to get a patent and keep their invention secret is obvious. But in the best interest of the public, congress should not give in to such wishes.
And congress can't do much - the USPTO is self-funded, congress can't force the USPTO to improve beyond what they are doing without more money, and congress isn't about to supply that. So I think the system is stuck without some enlightened new management. Now that surprises me. Surely Congress could change patent laws to modify the rules for patent application? For instance, make the USPTO liable for bad decisions by taking legal expenses out of the USPTO if a patent is sucessfully overturned in court.
That would go against the purpose of the patent system. The idea is that you are granted a temporary monopoly in exchange for publishing your invention. So you can either keep your invention as a secret or you can patent it. But you cannot have both.
Not anymore. Intel sells the Pentium D now, which is a dual core Pentium 4. The cheapest model (the Pentium D 820 with 2.8 GHz) is available at Alternate.de for 279 Euros. One might suspect Intel of dumping prices here, but it cannot be denied that this is an attractive offer.
This may be true for the average Joe Sixpack. But if you have the skills and reputation to be considered for an executive position, you should be able to negotiate better terms. Because at that level, management no longer considers you an exchangeable cog in the machine.
A big problem with XP is that DVD movies often have crap software that auto-installs... That might be difficult to get wrong, considering that Windows software usually does not work on Linux;-)
One would have to spend considerable effort to integrate something like Wine into KDE, just to facilitate spyware and junk. Not likely.
Oh, and screw fucking China. The bell curve hits just as strong there as anywhere else. They're not special. NO ONE IS. If the Chinese have the same distribution, they have 3 to 4 times as many smart people in absolute numbers (I don't know the exact demographics offhand). Of course that does not account for the quality of the school system, a good system may help more of the smart people to realize their potential.
This said, it seems to me that Asians are not great innovators, but very good at improving existing concepts. So when a technology matures and does not change much anymore, they will catch up. Consider cars for instance: When Japanese cars showed up in the European market in the 70s, they were considered inferior in quality and could compete only on price. Today, they are in general equal to European cars in quality. Toyota seems to do even better, they are leaders in reliability and in hybrid engines.
I mostly agree with your post, but having followed the public outcries over this and other nudity incidents, I think Americans are more prude than most Europeans. Look at "Nipplegate" for instance, when Janet Jackson showed a bit of bare breast. When a similar thing happens in Germany (and it has happened), it is not that big news.
On the other hand, the USA still have strong First Amendmend protection, and most German anti-pornography laws would probably not survive a lawsuit in the USA. So despite the IMHO excessive sensitivity of the US public, you have less problems with intolerant laws.
it seems that some devs should really learn about stuff like relational databases and transactions. At least for item transfers. Those should be atomic operations and relational databases are good at ensuring these.
What's really needed right now is a game that the FPS crowd will initially flock to, play for a bit, then leave just as quickly because it puts them at a disadvantage by design, i.e. powergaming does nothing but consume hours that could have been spent dungeon-crawling with friends, or exploring the world, or engaging in a tradeskill. Griefing and being a jackass gets you in bad standing with other adventurers, and eventually kingdoms so that you're KOS for guards or adventurers alike.
I don't think removing the leveling from combat skills would discourage the FPS crowd. After all, most FPS don't have leveling and are popular anyway. It might help the casual gamer, however, because he does not need to spend months training his avatar.
The other part of your suggestions (disadvantages for griefplayers) is desirable but difficult to get right. There are ways of griefing that are not easily identified by software.
I agree with most of your thoughts, and this gave me an idea: What about MORPGs that are designed for a small number of players and run off a clan server, in the way Half-Life mods like CS usually do? This would allow the developing company to do without a large server farm and thus cut down on operating expenses.
Think of it as a cross between Morrowind and Counterstrike. For games with some FPS action built in, this might work even better than traditional MMORPGs. After all, Counterstrike and Call Of Duty multiplayer works fine, with much less lag issues than the big MMORPGS seem to have. Microsoft has halfway done it BTW with Freelancer. It misses most of the usual leveling schemes and tends to be shallow in the long run - but the basic concept is there.
OK, then call it a legitimate replacement. Considering the copy protection, I think that BnetD has enough legitimate use to justify its existence, similar to the Betamax decision of the Supreme Court. The BnetD case is not over, btw. See http://www.eff.org/IP/Emulation/Blizzard_v_bnetd/
And don't try to counter with the BnetD stuff: it's called protecting your investment. Blizzard has every right to do that, just like you or anyone else. I consider the BnetD project legitimate competition, since they wrote the code on their own (I would agree with going after warez). As a result, Blizzard's suing the BnetD guys got them on my boycott list. Without that, I might have tried WoW.
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Yes, you communist nazi's, if you do work, you should get paid for it. [...] Those who go GPL and they go "dude, I have no income!! But I have a penguin sticker!!" yeah, I hope that Penguin sticker gets you chicks because it ain't puttin' dinner on the table..
In case you did not notice, selling mods to the OS is NOT Google's business. They are earning their money from advertising and doing just fine. Giving away a few enhancements to Linux will hardly be visible in their financial results.
Concerning the SCO business, if you follow the news at Groklaw it becomes increasingly clear that SCO's case does NOT look good. SCO can consider itself lucky if it reaches a settlement that allows it to survive. So I would not worry about that angle anymore.
Pay for SuSE? What do you get when you purchase a boxed set from SuSE?
Bootable CDs for easy installation. Last time I checked, FTP was not quite as comfortable. Of course, this is supposed to change with Open SuSE, where ISOs will be available.
This said, I don't mind spending some money on the boxed set, SuSE developers need to eat too. But I won't buy a new set every three months (last one I bought was SuSE 9.1). So Open SuSE might find it's way to me as download.
But seriously, many applications rely on the IE engine being available. So if WINE wants to run these, it needs some equivalent that duplicates the API.
The rendered screens might still look slightly different because Gecko != IE, but at least the apps will work.
Being a programmer myself, I find Joels blog quite worthwile to read. Many of his ideas match my own experience, which indicates that he usually knows what he's talking about. Others are new to me, and worth thinking about. Sometimes I disagree, but that tends to on a philosophical level rather than on hard facts. So even where I think Joel is wrong, I see no reason to consider him outright incompetent.
One wonders if that could not be done cheaper in a vacuum chamber on earth ;-)
A "directive" is a decision by the European council of ministers and the EU parliament about how the EU member states have to shape their national law. While a directive is not a law by itself, member states have to adopt it or they will be in violation of the EU treaty.
;-). As the example of the German representative shows, they sometimes vote against the explicit wishes of their countries' parliament.
:-(
A few words about the actors in this game:
-The council of ministers consists of representatives of the member states' governments. Usually ministers
-The EU parliament is directly elected by the citizens of the member states, in a EU-wide election.
The process of creating a EU directive:
Only the council of ministers can propose a new directive. The parliament can propose changes, but if the council insists on its version of the directive, the parliament can only reject the directive completely. This also requires an absolute majority of the members of parliament, so a divided or not fully present parliament will usually be unable to stop a directive.
Obviously, this arrangement gives the council of ministers more power in directive-making than the EU parliament. I believe that this is undermining the checks and balances a proper democracy should have, but the parliaments of the EU member states seemed to have no problem ratifying the treaty that established these terms. The "Enabling Act" of 1933 comes to mind
TV/VCR repair is in danger of becoming extinct, because manufacturing new units tends to be cheaper than repairing. Otherwise, I might be tempted...
How is it used for DRM? It can't be done today. They way it would be used, sometimes in the future, is to ship the chip with a unique key pre-installed in it, and with a certificate from the manufacturer on that key. Then the BIOS and OS get enhanced to do a "trusted boot" ...
The BIOS part is the one I am slightly worried about. As soon as mainboards come with a BIOS that insists on booting only an "attested" OS, Open Source users will have a problem. Something to look out for when buying hardware in the future.
And of course while they are at it they can lock out bootleg Windows licenses forever, win-win for them. And if not outright outlaw Linux, at least make sure only generic whitebox motherboards from Taiwan run it.
Assuming your scenario comes true, I guess the generic whitebox motherboards from Taiwan will still run both Linux and bootleg Windows licenses, because they are available without any TCPA.
Dell and HP will lose the share of the geek market they have now (which I suspect is small enough anyway). Small shops that build PCs on the whitebox motherboards will grab some marketshare from half-geeks that don't insist on building their own, but still want to use Linux.
The only real danger would be legislation that mandates a form of TCPA that blocks Open Source operating systems. Watch out for that and support the EFF if necessary.
3) Fill hard drive with plenty of porn. Everyone looking at the contents will assume they just caught a lazy, porn-addicted nerd. No further analysis will happen ;-)
You and grandparent are both halfway right:
Microsoft certainly has some good software, but they also are "overprotective of their market" to the point where they tend to use illegal methods. That is where grandparent has a point.
And that overprotectiveness makes it very unlikely that we will ever see a GPLed Open Source Windows. Because it would make it much easier to compete in the market for operating systems that can run Windows applications. To be more specific:
-The Wine project would make rapid progress. Partly by copying code, partly by the availability of the source code to study (in areas where direct copying does not help them).
-Soon every Linux distribution, and maybe BSD too, would come with the ability to run almost any Windows application.
But I don't want to get into that, it was your statement that "I don't care if small inventors can no longer afford to apply for a patent---much of the innovation seems to come from megacorps anyway...."
There is some truth in this, but you fail to mention that a deluge of patents also makes it hard for the small guy to stay in business. Because if there are patents on every imaginable trivial thing, he will either be hard pressed to avoid all of them, or he risks to be eventually sued by an aggressive patent holder.
I beg to differ. For the original reasoning, see
u tion/constitution__full_text.html,
http://www.lynchburg.edu/academic/polisci/constit
section 8:
The Congress shall have power[...]To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries
Now progress is only promoted by patents if the public gets something that the inventor would not give away without being rewarded with a patent. Usually, that something is a description of how to implement the invention.
That inventors would love to get a patent and keep their invention secret is obvious. But in the best interest of the public, congress should not give in to such wishes.
And congress can't do much - the USPTO is self-funded, congress can't force the USPTO to improve beyond what they are doing without more money, and congress isn't about to supply that. So I think the system is stuck without some enlightened new management.
Now that surprises me. Surely Congress could change patent laws to modify the rules for patent application?
For instance, make the USPTO liable for bad decisions by taking legal expenses out of the USPTO if a patent is sucessfully overturned in court.
That would go against the purpose of the patent system. The idea is that you are granted a temporary monopoly in exchange for publishing your invention.
So you can either keep your invention as a secret or you can patent it. But you cannot have both.
Not anymore. Intel sells the Pentium D now, which is a dual core Pentium 4. The cheapest model (the Pentium D 820 with 2.8 GHz) is available at Alternate.de for 279 Euros.
One might suspect Intel of dumping prices here, but it cannot be denied that this is an attractive offer.
This may be true for the average Joe Sixpack.
But if you have the skills and reputation to be considered for an executive position, you should be able to negotiate better terms. Because at that level, management no longer considers you an exchangeable cog in the machine.
A big problem with XP is that DVD movies often have crap software that auto-installs... ;-)
That might be difficult to get wrong, considering that Windows software usually does not work on Linux
One would have to spend considerable effort to integrate something like Wine into KDE, just to facilitate spyware and junk. Not likely.
Oh, and screw fucking China. The bell curve hits just as strong there as anywhere else. They're not special. NO ONE IS.
If the Chinese have the same distribution, they have 3 to 4 times as many smart people in absolute numbers (I don't know the exact demographics offhand).
Of course that does not account for the quality of the school system, a good system may help more of the smart people to realize their potential.
This said, it seems to me that Asians are not great innovators, but very good at improving existing concepts. So when a technology matures and does not change much anymore, they will catch up. Consider cars for instance:
When Japanese cars showed up in the European market in the 70s, they were considered inferior in quality and could compete only on price. Today, they are in general equal to European cars in quality. Toyota seems to do even better, they are leaders in reliability and in hybrid engines.
I mostly agree with your post, but having followed the public outcries over this and other nudity incidents, I think Americans are more prude than most Europeans. Look at "Nipplegate" for instance, when Janet Jackson showed a bit of bare breast. When a similar thing happens in Germany (and it has happened), it is not that big news.
On the other hand, the USA still have strong First Amendmend protection, and most German anti-pornography laws would probably not survive a lawsuit in the USA. So despite the IMHO excessive sensitivity of the US public, you have less problems with intolerant laws.
I'm not a MMORPG designer either, but considering certain recent MMORPG problems
/ 1644250&tid=209&tid=10
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/19
it seems that some devs should really learn about stuff like relational databases and transactions. At least for item transfers. Those should be atomic operations and relational databases are good at ensuring these.
What's really needed right now is a game that the FPS crowd will initially flock to, play for a bit, then leave just as quickly because it puts them at a disadvantage by design, i.e. powergaming does nothing but consume hours that could have been spent dungeon-crawling with friends, or exploring the world, or engaging in a tradeskill. Griefing and being a jackass gets you in bad standing with other adventurers, and eventually kingdoms so that you're KOS for guards or adventurers alike.
I don't think removing the leveling from combat skills would discourage the FPS crowd. After all, most FPS don't have leveling and are popular anyway. It might help the casual gamer, however, because he does not need to spend months training his avatar.
The other part of your suggestions (disadvantages for griefplayers) is desirable but difficult to get right. There are ways of griefing that are not easily identified by software.
I agree with most of your thoughts, and this gave me an idea:
What about MORPGs that are designed for a small number of players and run off a clan server, in the way Half-Life mods like CS usually do? This would allow the developing company to do without a large server farm and thus cut down on operating expenses.
Think of it as a cross between Morrowind and Counterstrike. For games with some FPS action built in, this might work even better than traditional MMORPGs. After all, Counterstrike and Call Of Duty multiplayer works fine, with much less lag issues than the big MMORPGS seem to have.
Microsoft has halfway done it BTW with Freelancer. It misses most of the usual leveling schemes and tends to be shallow in the long run - but the basic concept is there.
OK, then call it a legitimate replacement.
Considering the copy protection, I think that BnetD has enough legitimate use to justify its existence, similar to the Betamax decision of the Supreme Court. The BnetD case is not over, btw. See
http://www.eff.org/IP/Emulation/Blizzard_v_bnetd/
And don't try to counter with the BnetD stuff: it's called protecting your investment. Blizzard has every right to do that, just like you or anyone else.
I consider the BnetD project legitimate competition, since they wrote the code on their own (I would agree with going after warez).
As a result, Blizzard's suing the BnetD guys got them on my boycott list. Without that, I might have tried WoW.