You know, it is kind of funny to watch the United States of America slowly erode the rights of its citizens.
Personally, I think it's terrifying to watch. Whether I like it or not, my own country is directly affected by what goes on the US: economics, manufacturing, software, trade agreements, international patent enforcement and US multinationals are all factors which have a direct bearing on my quality of life and day-to-day existence. This includes:
what movies I can watch and when
what multiple I have to apply to convert from dollars
what computer hardware is available
what technology is coming down the pipe
what clueless legislation my own government think would be a good idea here as well
Yes, my own clueless government often take the lead from US legislation on issues like intellectual property. Luckily there's no real law enforcement here and the country has a famous history of civil disobedience. But it's still disheartening to watch US citizens who should know better do nothing - yes I'm talking to YOU - John Q. Geek sitting there reading this post. When was the last time you wrote to your Representative? Voted in an election? Publicly protested against a company you didn't like? Boycotted a company's products and told them why you were doing so? Contributed to the EFF? Engaged in civil disobedience and were prepared to take the consequences? Great - we need more like you:)
Maybe not with Quake but definitely in another game. Consider the cryptic yet almost understandable meanings of the following phrases:
Somone set up us the bomb
We get signal
Main screen turn on
How are you gentlemen !!
All your base are belong to us
Go and read the correspondence between Hanssen and his KGB controllers and note how these phrases convey the exact meaning of what correspondence passed between them.
The last phrase is definitely the most disturbing. Was it sent before he was caught or after? I think we should be told.
So let me try instead of getting sidetracked by the "is code really art?" argument. The basic principle is this: knowledge gained about every area of a game will always help, no matter what your job description in the team.
So for instance:
Artists will generally produce better work once they understand the concept of finite resources - frames per second, memory and compression.
Level designers work better when they have a concept of basic graphics principles such as "Overdraw is bad."
Coders have more sympathy for developing good tools when buggy ones can wipe out a team member's hard work.
Producers have more sympathy for sleepy team members when they try and solve Heisenbugs in 100 000-line listings themselves.
Asking "where do coders and artists fit in" these days is a tricky question. In the very best teams there's always some crossover knowledge to be gained. What counts is your attitude: can I work within these limits that the other people have set me?
If you're not only willing to learn all you can about your own discipline but as much as possible about the others, you'll be able to solve more problems when the crunch comes.
This was one of the things I really liked about Half Life: there was a story that you were a part of. Things unfolded, and you found things out by overhearing other people talking.
That is, right up to the teleporter level. Then the story evaporated like Helium-II on a hot stove.
Choose the most likely explanation for this:
The aliens were communicating useful plot information - it's just that you couldn't understand them e.g. "Greeeeeep snurghhhhhhherrrrrr" = "Forget Freeman! He'll never make it to the Boss Level."
They weren't but mindlessly killing them all is the most entertaining plot possible for the Xen universe.
Why am I replying to a troll from a userID in the 300s? Oh well:)
Basically if open source gets out of hand, normal software development will cease, and the quality of software will go down. Why? Because the top programmers will no longer program, if they don't get paid.
There are so many things wrong with these statements that I don't know where to start. But I think the real problem is one of mindset. You're used to a world in which crappy software has made billions of dollars for a few companies over the last twenty to twenty-five years or so. Much of that value has been gained from the secrecy of source code.
Thus it seems suprising to you that another model has emerged - where top (yes top) programmers work on software and make the source available for nothing. Not that there's no value - there's plenty of value in distributing that code, supporting it or paying people to improve it (a la Cygnus) - but the inherent value of secret source itself will never be as great as it was.
Want proof of this? Open Source is already "out of hand." The entire Internet, the majority of its mail infrastructure, the majority of its back-ends and a third of its Web servers run code which is freely available. Funny thing is, top programmers seem to program whether they get paid or not.
Normal software development (um, what does that mean by the way?) will not cease because there will always be solutions for which the code need not be opened. But if there are better ones where the code is freely available, the market will decide.
So, it takes a LOT of fuel to get there. If you take enough fuel to get BACK, you have to take even more fuel to get THERE, because you have to move the fuel to get back. Then you need even more fuel to haul the fuel to haul the fuel, and then some fuel to haul the fuel to haul the fuel to haul the fuel....
OK - I'm totally freaked out now. I did a calculation in my head based on your reasoning and came up with an answer: NEAR would need an infinite amount of fuel to get there and back.
I need to go to bed now...
Record companies are not stupid. Greedy, short-sighted - some say evil - but not stupid. Their plan of attack has not been to produce better methods of distribution or *gasp* cut their pricing model to stay competitive, but rather to attack fair use, control digital content as much as possible and extend that control as much as possible to PCs.
But, as this article makes fairly clear, studio-quality productions are now within easy reach of anyone with a PC and a modicum of talent (some would say even the talent is optional). If you want cool new music from the best trackers or the best independent musicians make sure you keep those watching over your rights financially healthy.
Troll version: screw the RIAA/MPAA/Disney/Time Warner bunnies and join the EFF today!
Ok, I'll ask the obvious. Why would you run for years in boots? Drill sargent? Or just unaware that better footware exists?
I wasn't a drill sergeant but there was almost always one close at hand:) The lower limb injuries where I served were really bad during the late 80s. After a few official inquiries, we got better footwear but in some cases the damage had been done.
As someone who suffers from more or less permanent shin splints as a result of years of running long distances in boots, this is good news. It would be nice to have something which repairs greenstick fractures, stress fractures and hairline cracks of the shin bone.
The only downside is the endless paper-TV ads. "How much would expect to pay for this? $500? $1000? Nope - for an incredible $249 the new BoneGro can be yours!"
Re:Get used to it. We're in for a wild ride.
on
Spidergoats
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· Score: 2
I agree, right up to this part:
... and the good 'ol christian right had something to say about the printing press back in the day, too.
Other way around. The printing press broke the monopoly that Rome had over the Bible and literacy. This monopoly extended to quite a few things but literacy was the biggie. Once the common person could read the Bible in his own language, the Protestant movement became unstoppable. Since there was no need for the message to be dispensed from the pulpit of the R.C. Church, people became more and more independent from it. Economically, Protestantism also was more profitable sicne it emphasised, among other things, righteousness through faith rather than forking out wodges of cash to the priests.
Martin Luther, arguably the most influential early figure in the breakaway from Rome, had at one time published nearly half of all books circulating in Germany at the time. The printing press was - and is - the friend of the Christian right.
The modern parallel is of course the Internet. Rome = modern governments, printing press = Internet + cryptography + PCs. But I digress...
There's no body language, baby-faced teens or grizzled old veterans, no culture or fashion clashes - just code and design that works or doesn't.
Having done projects both for a company in the real world and collaboratively online, I can safely say I far prefer the latter. No-one really gives a toss about how you look or smell or sound - just as long as you can contribute.
If you can get that attitude to spill over into the office, you'll be much better off. Unfortunately we all still make the same old mistakes and judge books by their covers.
Try typing in BLAMECANADA when you play the next version of Flight Unlimited, Flight Simulator or Pro Pilot and then fly under the Golden Gate. The developers might pay tribute:)
Your memory is one of the most powerful tools you can ever have - for business, programming, playing games - whatever. Memory training coupled with speed-reading skills should be taught at school (but sadly is only done so in a few very rare cases).
Have a look at this link for a good introduction to a number of mnemonic memory systems. I did one years ago (which I paid a few clams for) and I've never regretted it.
When up to speed you can remember things like:
phone numbers and appointments
people's names and faces
technical manuals in word for word detail
articles
entire books
shuffled decks of cards
Interestingly, memory seems to suffer from bit-rot much like software does - use it or lose it.
DVD players are a proprietary platform (because of the "decryption" code they contain). DVD's are built (encoded) to be played on that platform. DeCSS was written to allow people who had purchased a license to a DVD movie to play it on some platform other than a commercial DVD player.
Am I missing something here?
I don't think so. These two cases look exactly equivalent to me.
The supremely ironic thing is that bleem! actually makes money for Sony. The actual Playstation consoles are - and always have been - sold at a loss. Sony makes its money from titles. If you purchase bleem! and a bunch of titles, you give Sony its profits from the titles without incurring the loss to them of having to buy a console:)
I'm sure there's a flaw in this reasoning somewhere...
But now the real danger is that the recording industry has succeeded in its objective, which as Hillary Rosen (president and CEO of the Recording
Industry Association of America) said, is to guarantee that no venture capitalist invests money in new modes of distribution unless Hollywood signs off.
This is the guts of it. Media companies don't like the potential that new technologies have for distributing content (and excluding them from the supply chain). So what's their strategy been? Armies of lawsuits to make sure that a) anyone with a good idea has to waste their time defending a legal case and b) anyone who wants to fund a good idea won't - because they don't want to get involved in a legal case.
Ironically, the most dangerous and subversive tools are the ones written by individuals or small teams with zero funding - Gnutella, OpenNAP and Freenet.
If by deleting code you're adding functionality, then the system needs a rewrite. Yes I am being serious and yes it has happened to me. I once had to maintain an order entry system which was made a darn sight simpler by drilling a whole lot of unnecessary routines. What was left over was simpler and faster but still ugly. Rewriting it improved it immensely.
if you're a professional journalist, your job is to find out what's happening, and document it.
Journalists shouldn't create the news, they should just illuminate it.
You're right and I do - pretty much on a weekly basis when it comes to this kind of news these days. Consider the first paragraph as the professional advice and the last two as the rant:)
If you can show me one person who has not been able to pursue legitimate recording activites
because of copy protection I will eat my words. Otherwise I stand by what I say.
Easy. From the article (which I can tell you did read because of your quote later on):
By private agreements behind the laws and
standards, such as the unwritten agreement that DAT and MiniDisc recorders will treat analog inputs as if
they contained copyrighted materials which the user has no rights in. (My recording of my brother's
wedding is uncopyable, because my MiniDisc decks act as if I and my brother don't own the copyright on
it.)
John Gilmore wanted to pursue a legitimate recording activity and was unable to because of copy protection. Start eating.
And people seem to think no-one gets hurt by these things.
They are wrong. The people working for record and computer companies have jobs and families
too.
Boo-frigging-hoo. So the entire population must accept crippled technology and a steady erosion of its constitutional rights so that a small minority of sharks and their dependants can survive?
As for the rest of your comment - copyright does not mean "owned by" and it is not the same as property. It means the copyright holder has a limited time over the distribution and use of his or her work.
...join the EFF. If you live outside the US, then do whatever you can to make sure that your government doesn't bow down and accept any stupid IP recommendations from the US.
And if you're a pissed-off journalist, attend Sony press conferences and tell them they can shove their products up their corporate backsides. It make not make much difference but it _will_ make you feel better. Nothing better than seeing the grin freeze on some smart lackey with all the Playstation buzzwords after you tell him his company can go fsck themselves.
And if you're a pissed-off techie and you work for anyone of these scum-buckets then I have just one question: WHY? Don't give me that "well I have to earn a living" shite. Go and work for someone else and get a clear conscience.
you took time to compose an e-mail to the Webmaster of a browser-specific site? Did you make it clear that you would not be doing business with them because they were forcing you into one kind of browser? If it wasn't an e-commerce site did you mail them anyway and complain? I say this because only if there's a consistent stream of complaints against this kind of thing will anything get done.
This is not only good news for the menus-in-your-boot-login crowd but also for people who don't want the hassle of writing their own widget sets under the console using ncurses or some other toolkit. Single source tree - works under X using Gtk+ or under the framebuffer for those who don't want (or need) X to run. Nice.
One question though - what about the GDK functions? Will those be transparently wrapped?
As hard as unix programmers hate to admit it, hungarian notation (i.e. windows style programming) is far easier to read than unix code.
I don't hate to admit it, I don't have to. I hate it. It's a personal preference thing - some (very few) like it, the majority don't. In fact, I've yet to see the source to a GPL'ed program which uses Hungarian Notation. Counter examples welcome.
Mr Torvalds' personal perference can be found in/usr/src/linux/Documentation/CodingStyle:
C is a Spartan language, and so should your naming be. Unlike Modula-2 and Pascal programmers, C programmers do not use cute names like ThisVariableIsATemporaryCounter. A C programmer would call that variable "tmp", which is much easier to write, and not the least more difficult to understand.
...
Encoding the type of a function into the name (so-called Hungarian notation) is brain damaged - the compiler knows the types anyway and can
check those, and it only confuses the programmer. No wonder MicroSoft makes buggy programs.
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Personally, I think it's terrifying to watch. Whether I like it or not, my own country is directly affected by what goes on the US: economics, manufacturing, software, trade agreements, international patent enforcement and US multinationals are all factors which have a direct bearing on my quality of life and day-to-day existence. This includes:
Yes, my own clueless government often take the lead from US legislation on issues like intellectual property. Luckily there's no real law enforcement here and the country has a famous history of civil disobedience. But it's still disheartening to watch US citizens who should know better do nothing - yes I'm talking to YOU - John Q. Geek sitting there reading this post. When was the last time you wrote to your Representative? Voted in an election? Publicly protested against a company you didn't like? Boycotted a company's products and told them why you were doing so? Contributed to the EFF? Engaged in civil disobedience and were prepared to take the consequences? Great - we need more like you :)
- Somone set up us the bomb
- We get signal
- Main screen turn on
- How are you gentlemen !!
- All your base are belong to us
Go and read the correspondence between Hanssen and his KGB controllers and note how these phrases convey the exact meaning of what correspondence passed between them.The last phrase is definitely the most disturbing. Was it sent before he was caught or after? I think we should be told.
So for instance:
Asking "where do coders and artists fit in" these days is a tricky question. In the very best teams there's always some crossover knowledge to be gained. What counts is your attitude: can I work within these limits that the other people have set me?
If you're not only willing to learn all you can about your own discipline but as much as possible about the others, you'll be able to solve more problems when the crunch comes.
Choose the most likely explanation for this:
Basically if open source gets out of hand, normal software development will cease, and the quality of software will go down. Why? Because the top programmers will no longer program, if they don't get paid.
There are so many things wrong with these statements that I don't know where to start. But I think the real problem is one of mindset. You're used to a world in which crappy software has made billions of dollars for a few companies over the last twenty to twenty-five years or so. Much of that value has been gained from the secrecy of source code.
Thus it seems suprising to you that another model has emerged - where top (yes top) programmers work on software and make the source available for nothing. Not that there's no value - there's plenty of value in distributing that code, supporting it or paying people to improve it (a la Cygnus) - but the inherent value of secret source itself will never be as great as it was.
Want proof of this? Open Source is already "out of hand." The entire Internet, the majority of its mail infrastructure, the majority of its back-ends and a third of its Web servers run code which is freely available. Funny thing is, top programmers seem to program whether they get paid or not.
Normal software development (um, what does that mean by the way?) will not cease because there will always be solutions for which the code need not be opened. But if there are better ones where the code is freely available, the market will decide.
- read when I like and where I like
- read in any order I like
- quote from for the purposes of research or in the creation of a derivative work
- sell to someone else
- lend to someone else
The new technology may be great but it's how the content will be restricted that worries me.OK - I'm totally freaked out now. I did a calculation in my head based on your reasoning and came up with an answer: NEAR would need an infinite amount of fuel to get there and back. I need to go to bed now...
But, as this article makes fairly clear, studio-quality productions are now within easy reach of anyone with a PC and a modicum of talent (some would say even the talent is optional). If you want cool new music from the best trackers or the best independent musicians make sure you keep those watching over your rights financially healthy.
Troll version: screw the RIAA/MPAA/Disney/Time Warner bunnies and join the EFF today!
I wasn't a drill sergeant but there was almost always one close at hand :) The lower limb injuries where I served were really bad during the late 80s. After a few official inquiries, we got better footwear but in some cases the damage had been done.
The only downside is the endless paper-TV ads. "How much would expect to pay for this? $500? $1000? Nope - for an incredible $249 the new BoneGro can be yours!"
Other way around. The printing press broke the monopoly that Rome had over the Bible and literacy. This monopoly extended to quite a few things but literacy was the biggie. Once the common person could read the Bible in his own language, the Protestant movement became unstoppable. Since there was no need for the message to be dispensed from the pulpit of the R.C. Church, people became more and more independent from it. Economically, Protestantism also was more profitable sicne it emphasised, among other things, righteousness through faith rather than forking out wodges of cash to the priests.
Martin Luther, arguably the most influential early figure in the breakaway from Rome, had at one time published nearly half of all books circulating in Germany at the time. The printing press was - and is - the friend of the Christian right.
The modern parallel is of course the Internet. Rome = modern governments, printing press = Internet + cryptography + PCs. But I digress...
Having done projects both for a company in the real world and collaboratively online, I can safely say I far prefer the latter. No-one really gives a toss about how you look or smell or sound - just as long as you can contribute.
If you can get that attitude to spill over into the office, you'll be much better off. Unfortunately we all still make the same old mistakes and judge books by their covers.
Try typing in BLAMECANADA when you play the next version of Flight Unlimited, Flight Simulator or Pro Pilot and then fly under the Golden Gate. The developers might pay tribute :)
Have a look at this link for a good introduction to a number of mnemonic memory systems. I did one years ago (which I paid a few clams for) and I've never regretted it.
When up to speed you can remember things like:
Interestingly, memory seems to suffer from bit-rot much like software does - use it or lose it.
I don't think so. These two cases look exactly equivalent to me.
The supremely ironic thing is that bleem! actually makes money for Sony. The actual Playstation consoles are - and always have been - sold at a loss. Sony makes its money from titles. If you purchase bleem! and a bunch of titles, you give Sony its profits from the titles without incurring the loss to them of having to buy a console :)
I'm sure there's a flaw in this reasoning somewhere...
Chanted by protesters against the Lotus-Apple look and feel suit a lifetime ago IIRC...
But now the real danger is that the recording industry has succeeded in its objective, which as Hillary Rosen (president and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America) said, is to guarantee that no venture capitalist invests money in new modes of distribution unless Hollywood signs off.
This is the guts of it. Media companies don't like the potential that new technologies have for distributing content (and excluding them from the supply chain). So what's their strategy been? Armies of lawsuits to make sure that a) anyone with a good idea has to waste their time defending a legal case and b) anyone who wants to fund a good idea won't - because they don't want to get involved in a legal case.
Ironically, the most dangerous and subversive tools are the ones written by individuals or small teams with zero funding - Gnutella, OpenNAP and Freenet.
You're right and I do - pretty much on a weekly basis when it comes to this kind of news these days. Consider the first paragraph as the professional advice and the last two as the rant :)
Easy. From the article (which I can tell you did read because of your quote later on):
By private agreements behind the laws and standards, such as the unwritten agreement that DAT and MiniDisc recorders will treat analog inputs as if they contained copyrighted materials which the user has no rights in. (My recording of my brother's wedding is uncopyable, because my MiniDisc decks act as if I and my brother don't own the copyright on it.)
John Gilmore wanted to pursue a legitimate recording activity and was unable to because of copy protection. Start eating.
And people seem to think no-one gets hurt by these things. They are wrong. The people working for record and computer companies have jobs and families too.
Boo-frigging-hoo. So the entire population must accept crippled technology and a steady erosion of its constitutional rights so that a small minority of sharks and their dependants can survive?
As for the rest of your comment - copyright does not mean "owned by" and it is not the same as property. It means the copyright holder has a limited time over the distribution and use of his or her work.
And if you're a pissed-off journalist, attend Sony press conferences and tell them they can shove their products up their corporate backsides. It make not make much difference but it _will_ make you feel better. Nothing better than seeing the grin freeze on some smart lackey with all the Playstation buzzwords after you tell him his company can go fsck themselves.
And if you're a pissed-off techie and you work for anyone of these scum-buckets then I have just one question: WHY? Don't give me that "well I have to earn a living" shite. Go and work for someone else and get a clear conscience.
Aah - I feel better already...
One question though - what about the GDK functions? Will those be transparently wrapped?
I don't hate to admit it, I don't have to. I hate it. It's a personal preference thing - some (very few) like it, the majority don't. In fact, I've yet to see the source to a GPL'ed program which uses Hungarian Notation. Counter examples welcome.
Mr Torvalds' personal perference can be found in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/CodingStyle:
C is a Spartan language, and so should your naming be. Unlike Modula-2 and Pascal programmers, C programmers do not use cute names like ThisVariableIsATemporaryCounter. A C programmer would call that variable "tmp", which is much easier to write, and not the least more difficult to understand.
Encoding the type of a function into the name (so-called Hungarian notation) is brain damaged - the compiler knows the types anyway and can check those, and it only confuses the programmer. No wonder MicroSoft makes buggy programs.