How has this honestly changed the profession of photography? His friend probably felt uncomfortable with the rich man's effortless and pointless consumerism, but his friend wasn't actually denied other opportunities when it came right down to it.
The boor with the $5000 camera is in no way competing with the up-and-coming professional with his $500 camera. So sure - there's no impact to the profession. Moot point.
The MMORPG is a smaller economy but it works the same way. The real issue is the design of that game, and whether it can withstand such tilted gamesmanship. If the gold farmers or the insta-knighthood characters are really clogging up the playground by camping at all the spawn points and inflating the price of dragon eyeballs, then I would point to the playground designers, not the farmers and not the insta-knights.
I agree to a large extent. Good game design goes a long way. However, ultimately you have to deal with the very nature of the game. At some point you have to allow for rewarding luck and (to a larger extent) time with some sort of gains. If you want to maintain a social structure... you have to allow for trading of some form of token. As soon as you do these two things, you'll have individuals looking for a short-cut and a market willing to supply them with one. Once that shortcut involves influences outside the game, then are you really playing the game any more? Or are you simply cheating?
it is going to take society far. it's called robinhood: steal from the rich, give to the poor. works for me, i don't see the problem
Because under that ideal, stealing from the poor isn't all that bad either. Neither is stealing from the guy who worked hard and happens to be just a little less poor than the robber. What you're describing here isn't social justice. It's naked aggression with some sort of tacked-on moral justification.
Robin Hood is a nice story. But this isn't it. Especially when we come to find out our Asian "Robin Hood" avatars are actually common thugs being paid by the Sheriff to steal from the middle class merchants and make life easy for royalty. Yeah - I know. A thug has to eat too. That doesn't mean robbery is justified.
Wrong, Buckwheat, but nice try. I'm saying that what some, especially the GPLv3 crowd are doing is saying we have to accept their version of freedom. Like we are telling Iraq that they must accept our version of democracy. Or, the old Soviet Union telling their people they are free because the choice has already been made for them.
Hold up there, Sparkie. All you're doing is dressing up the same tired "GPL vs. BSD" argument with attack-words like "hypocrite" and tacking on some emotionally charged, completely irrelevant issues (politics). And you continue to do so. That's a troll. You want to make a point? Try a little less emotional baggage.
Free software is great, but to be truly free, the user should be able to do anything... ANYTHING they want with it.
Do you really want to enforce your version of freedom on me? Isn't that what Bush is doing in the Middle East?
Aren't you just the cutest little troll! Bringing Bush and the Middle East in to your snide swipe on Free Software. How adorable. Bet'cha really hoping for a big hairball of furious threads, aren't you? Ahh yes. The optimism of youth and carefree summer days.
I also would like to announce the SprocketOS Linux distribution. We at SprocketOS are always concerned with putting our customers first. Just like these other "Linux companies", we also do have customers. Honest. In any case... this wasn't just about Microsoft cash. We believe that our pending agreement with Microsoft will create a rich environment of cooperation and benefit to our company. Micorosoft has a history of this sort of thing. Besides... our CEO of Innovation (who just happens to be my wife) is willing to go on record for a mere additional $5,000US to confirm that she believes our product may infringe on Microsoft patents. Granted - she's never seen any code and has no idea of the history of software patents, Linux, or Unix in general. But Laura Didio has proven such trivial concerns does not interfere with being an expert. We expect no issue with this announcement and are expressing shock at the back-lash we're about to receive from the Linux community.
Because I have such a fondness for Slashdot... I'll let you folks in on a scoop. In two months, we'll be liquidating the company and forming a new distro. I'll be doing a search-and-replace on this press release to change the distro / company name. We hope to do this every other month. It beats real work.
Its like owning car or a house. You know how to use them but you don't need to know how to fix them. You can hire people to do that for you. Do you think I want to learn a plumbers or electrician's trade just to fix my house or car? Programming is *HARD* work. Most folks just flat out can't do it. So aside from the software being free as in beer, why should any non-programmer care about open source? Especially since that lower cost is often offset by a tradeoff of worse/lesser User Interface design.
When your car breaks, do you have to take it back to the manufacturer to have it fixed? If you decide you want to remodel your bathroom or install a new lighting fixture, do you have to hunt down the original builder (assuming they're still in business) and negotiate them coming in to do the work? Of course not. These are (reasonably) open systems that any competent mechanic, plumber, or electrician can work on at your direction. Sure - you don't know how to do these things. But you have a wide choice of who to do the work in the exact way you want (technical issues aside).
Open Source is important if you want that same flexibility in your IT infrastructure. Maybe you have no intention of ever touching a line of code. But the people you hire to do it for you will have everything they need to do the work to your specifications.
From my point of view the only difference is that Israel due to historical reason has a stronger lobby in the US, and the US a veto in the security council. But that is it.
It also might have something to do with the geopolitical chess game between the US and the USSR that went on for several decades.
No, it is entertainment. If I want life I'll watch a documentary and even those are passed through the director's filter.
Psst... don't look now... but life? The series of events going on around you even as you read this? Passed through your own personal filter. And possibly even with less perspective than afforded a documentary director who on occasion is able to collect viewpoints from differing sources. Nobody gets a complete, unadulterated perspective. Unless you believe in God who, being omniscient, gets a heck of a good seat to the action.
People predicted long ago that once money got involved with the net, it would radically change. They were right. All of computing has.
You act like the statement was prophetic and not just stating the obvious. Money is a common denominator for all interests. As such, wherever money is involved, it will bring in all manner of individuals... including those with very predatory motives.
The Internet and computing in general have expanded to a point that it attracts a vast number of individuals. Some are decent folks. Some are not. And as such, these things are becoming tools to do good things as well as tools to do bad things. Forgive me if I don't feign shock.
Yeah - there's a lot of bad out there. I'm especially aware of it because that's what I do. But I'm also keenly aware of all the good involved too. I'll take the trade-off. I just wish the folks engineering the devices and mechanisms we use would be a little more keenly aware of that trade-off as well.
Has anyone noticed that Microsoft had zero lobbyists in Washington before the anti-trust lawsuit, and they now spend $200 million a year on Washington lobbyists?
This is always touted as one of Microsoft's lessons learned - be involved in the government. Part of this is probably due to a belief that the anti-trust lawsuit was a vendetta brought on by more politically savvy sour-grapes competitors. I don't agree. But I do think it was only a matter of time for Microsoft to get involved anyway.
Microsoft is a large entity with a vested interest in how the market behaves. And the market itself is large enough to touch on almost every aspect of our lives (its what "we" always knew would happen back in the '80s with our little hobbiest microcomputers waxing poetic about the future). With the market so important, Congress is going to get involved eventually... mainly at the prodding of lobbyists from other industries touched by the expanding IT market. It makes sense that Microsoft would decide to have its views put in the ears of Congress as well.
Does this mean Congress-critters are demanding payouts? I'm not so sure its exactly that (although I would expect it is accurate in some cases). But I am positive you're not going to be well represented if those that would represent your view are unaware of what that view is. Or even worse... people with an opposing view have managed to convince your favorite Congress-critter that reality lines up with their viewpoint (queue this post's theme song).
Fortunately, it's not a zero-sum game. I think MS understands this, probably better then the average slashdotter.
I wouldn't be so sure. Look at history... look at what's going on now... and then see who believes in zero-sum gamesmanship. I'm not sure what you consider an average Slashdotter but it seems to me that when Microsoft is accused of being "evil" it is about their strategy of forcing a zero-sum game - of engineered incompatibilities and product lock-in (with the exception of their recent legal strategies). It's the Slashdot rant that's calling for an honest reality and doing away with these forced zero-sum shenanigans. Microsoft has only to do it. They don't.
Granted - that doesn't mean Microsoft doesn't understand the situation. But it doesn't make them any more insightful than your "average slashdotter." Even the more rabid bandwagon-hopping variety.
You don't get the benefit of those warranty disclaimers if you release in the wild as public domain.
Do you have a reference to this? It seems to me that one could just as effectively waiver any warranty while abandoning copyright as placing the waiver inside a license which negates most copyright restrictions. Liability and copyright are two very distinctive things. But maybe I'm missing something.
It's easy to use code and to release code. No Visions, no Causes, no lawyers, no Compliance and papers-please-style-development. Just some guy on the internet putting his code up for use.
Why not simply release your code to the public domain?
"And all Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning. In any conflict, your fate will depend on your action. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth" George W. Bush, March 17, 2003 [whitehouse.gov]
You might want to complete that quote:
And all Iraqi military and civilian personnel should listen carefully to this warning. In any conflict, your fate will depend on your action. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people.
(my emphasis)
Say - you don't suppose the interest in Iraq's oil might have something to do with funding the rebuilding of Iraq?
And you obviously need to watch this educational video. Pay attention to the part starting at 2:22.
Cute video. Some simple truths. And a really simplistic view of world politics. But it was entertaining. I'm thinking it goes over real well in propaganda circles.
The beef is that he is his own personal shill. Nearly every story he submits is a link to his own blog.
Which in an unto itself isn't that bad. The problem is that most if not all his blog entries are just links to the original information source with a rehash of the information source. There's no insightful commentary, critique, or audience participation to add value to the piece. It'd be more useful to just look at the guy's blog link... find the real information source linked within... and then link THAT instead. But I guess that would ruin the game.
So that means one of two things: 1. Smart people aren't trading in child pornography or 2. Smart people weren't caught to begin with, and still aren't
Well - you've got to keep in mind the context of our discussion. We were going out to lunch and I'm not exactly sure how it started... but I was mentioning Zimmerman's woes over PGP and she said "oh yeah - I was one of the investigators on that one." We then talked a bit about the good and bad uses of PGP (she had always seen PGP as nefarious until coming to work for our group). And when the conversation progressed to what she was doing after the PGP investigation she mentioned her years of investigating child pornography rings. I couldn't help linking the two parts of our conversation together with the question of how many of the badguys she investigated used encryption... and how many specifically used PGP. That's when she noted that the guys she investigated weren't very advanced when it came to information technology ("They just weren't that smart.").
I'm sure there are "smart" purveyors of kiddie porn. Almost any crime involves at least a small percentage of knowledgeable, intelligent criminals. Maybe her group just didn't catch any. But that's not the point. The important thing to consider is that for this particular criminal culture, encryption wasn't a part of the standard tool set. And one of the assumed evils of PGP hadn't come to pass.
And it probably shows just how stillborn general encryption of mail is. If average people don't learn that under threats of years in prison, what could possibly make regular people do it?
How many criminals believe they're going to get caught? And how many people (who aren't even criminals) have the right mindset to handle security issues? I would say the answer to both are "very few". Having said that... my impression is that encryption is much more commonplace among kiddie porn rings. I don't track criminal cases involving child pornography. But I do occasionally discuss cases where a system has been compromised and used for trafficking illicit data (child porn, warez, financial information, etc.). It is becoming more and more common to find that data in encrypted archives.
Any hacker/script-kiddie with a working knowledge of touch and a 'find' command could wreak equal havoc. Combined with a quick filter and another perl script to generate random timestamps, all launched regularly from cron? Forget it. Forensics folks would be better off scouring logs for a non-tainted timestamp and counting directory inode entries for approximate age.
And that seems to be the point - how many of these types actually know how to use touch or find... much less put together a perl script? By "hobbiest" they're not talking about our level of knowledge... they're talking average punk who thinks double-clicking a rootkit is advanced hacking. Criminals aren't always the sharpest crayons in the box.
I met one of the FBI agents involved in the investigation of Zimmerman over PGP. After that case, she moved on to child pornography cases. I asked her how many times they ran in to PGP being used by people trading in kiddie porn. Not a single one. She noted that the folks they were busting just weren't smart enough to understand that kind of thing.
That basic precautions are showing up enough to give investigators a problem says something both about the attackers and the investigations.
Um, while I do have great respect for Tolkein, I have to say: Who cares what he thought?
Tolkein's legacy was a fantastic series of fantasy novels that created a mythology unto their own. If I recall that was his goal in the first place, to create an English mythology. His legacy does not include a set of rules for ways in which we can enjoy this legacy. Any more than the ancient Greeks can object to us using their mythology to make God of War.
I don't think this is an attempt to seek permission or validation. I see a much more interesting angle to the question. I touched on this in an earlier post in this thread.
It occurs to me that Tolkien's work to create a modern mythology was largely wasted by the tools available in his time. Sure - he took on the role of a traditional story teller with an epic tale set in the world he outlined. But his narration read like a travel log as much as a story at times. And the background information he developed was far deeper than his more famous works.
It is almost as if Tolkien was hampered by the tools he had available. His works were beyond the simple narrative. Beyond even the visual effects Jackson had available to bring that narrative (or an adaptation thereof) to life on the screen. Tolkien didn't just write stories... or even mythology. He wrote source material. What would he have thought of the ability to take every aspect of his work and make them available in an interactive experience of an MMORP? Would thousands of individuals' stories offend the story teller in him? Or would the complexity of an artificial world appeal to his interest in crafting a complete mythology?
I agree that it would cover those sort of things. However, there's quite a conceptual difference between Chess or Monopoly and LOTRO. And that's no small consideration. There's a large leap from the very old tradition of telling a story to acting out a story with players, props, etc. We've become accustomed to the change. And we're now in the middle of a new concept where the individual can now be a part of a story... no longer imagining a sequence of events or witnessing them being acted out.
To me, that's the basis of the question. What does a story teller think of their world being a backdrop to an individual's own story rather than the backdrop to their own crafted storyline? Especially a story teller who seemed to enjoy crafting that backdrop even more than the story they told.
The rights sold included stage, film and merchandising. Wouldn't merchandising cover games?
Most people didn't know about computer games in 1968. Most associations with computers and games would likely bring up tic-tac-toe or chess in the public's mind. There was a small subculture of hackers working to lay foundations of the video game during this time period (Spacewar), it would still be a couple years before the industry was born (pong and spacewar adaptations). I would be very surprised if computer games would have even entered the minds of anyone involved in negotiating this deal.
Slashdot Mirror
The boor with the $5000 camera is in no way competing with the up-and-coming professional with his $500 camera. So sure - there's no impact to the profession. Moot point.
I agree to a large extent. Good game design goes a long way. However, ultimately you have to deal with the very nature of the game. At some point you have to allow for rewarding luck and (to a larger extent) time with some sort of gains. If you want to maintain a social structure... you have to allow for trading of some form of token. As soon as you do these two things, you'll have individuals looking for a short-cut and a market willing to supply them with one. Once that shortcut involves influences outside the game, then are you really playing the game any more? Or are you simply cheating?
Because under that ideal, stealing from the poor isn't all that bad either. Neither is stealing from the guy who worked hard and happens to be just a little less poor than the robber. What you're describing here isn't social justice. It's naked aggression with some sort of tacked-on moral justification.
Robin Hood is a nice story. But this isn't it. Especially when we come to find out our Asian "Robin Hood" avatars are actually common thugs being paid by the Sheriff to steal from the middle class merchants and make life easy for royalty. Yeah - I know. A thug has to eat too. That doesn't mean robbery is justified.
Hold up there, Sparkie. All you're doing is dressing up the same tired "GPL vs. BSD" argument with attack-words like "hypocrite" and tacking on some emotionally charged, completely irrelevant issues (politics). And you continue to do so. That's a troll. You want to make a point? Try a little less emotional baggage.
Freedom is not anarchy.
Aren't you just the cutest little troll! Bringing Bush and the Middle East in to your snide swipe on Free Software. How adorable. Bet'cha really hoping for a big hairball of furious threads, aren't you? Ahh yes. The optimism of youth and carefree summer days.
I also would like to announce the SprocketOS Linux distribution. We at SprocketOS are always concerned with putting our customers first. Just like these other "Linux companies", we also do have customers. Honest. In any case... this wasn't just about Microsoft cash. We believe that our pending agreement with Microsoft will create a rich environment of cooperation and benefit to our company. Micorosoft has a history of this sort of thing. Besides... our CEO of Innovation (who just happens to be my wife) is willing to go on record for a mere additional $5,000US to confirm that she believes our product may infringe on Microsoft patents. Granted - she's never seen any code and has no idea of the history of software patents, Linux, or Unix in general. But Laura Didio has proven such trivial concerns does not interfere with being an expert. We expect no issue with this announcement and are expressing shock at the back-lash we're about to receive from the Linux community.
Because I have such a fondness for Slashdot... I'll let you folks in on a scoop. In two months, we'll be liquidating the company and forming a new distro. I'll be doing a search-and-replace on this press release to change the distro / company name. We hope to do this every other month. It beats real work.
When your car breaks, do you have to take it back to the manufacturer to have it fixed? If you decide you want to remodel your bathroom or install a new lighting fixture, do you have to hunt down the original builder (assuming they're still in business) and negotiate them coming in to do the work? Of course not. These are (reasonably) open systems that any competent mechanic, plumber, or electrician can work on at your direction. Sure - you don't know how to do these things. But you have a wide choice of who to do the work in the exact way you want (technical issues aside).
Open Source is important if you want that same flexibility in your IT infrastructure. Maybe you have no intention of ever touching a line of code. But the people you hire to do it for you will have everything they need to do the work to your specifications.
It also might have something to do with the geopolitical chess game between the US and the USSR that went on for several decades.
Psst... don't look now... but life? The series of events going on around you even as you read this? Passed through your own personal filter. And possibly even with less perspective than afforded a documentary director who on occasion is able to collect viewpoints from differing sources. Nobody gets a complete, unadulterated perspective. Unless you believe in God who, being omniscient, gets a heck of a good seat to the action.
Sounds to me like you're wanting "In Post-Soviet Russia..." jokes. We don't do those. They're not funny.
You act like the statement was prophetic and not just stating the obvious. Money is a common denominator for all interests. As such, wherever money is involved, it will bring in all manner of individuals... including those with very predatory motives.
The Internet and computing in general have expanded to a point that it attracts a vast number of individuals. Some are decent folks. Some are not. And as such, these things are becoming tools to do good things as well as tools to do bad things. Forgive me if I don't feign shock.
Yeah - there's a lot of bad out there. I'm especially aware of it because that's what I do. But I'm also keenly aware of all the good involved too. I'll take the trade-off. I just wish the folks engineering the devices and mechanisms we use would be a little more keenly aware of that trade-off as well.
This is always touted as one of Microsoft's lessons learned - be involved in the government. Part of this is probably due to a belief that the anti-trust lawsuit was a vendetta brought on by more politically savvy sour-grapes competitors. I don't agree. But I do think it was only a matter of time for Microsoft to get involved anyway.
Microsoft is a large entity with a vested interest in how the market behaves. And the market itself is large enough to touch on almost every aspect of our lives (its what "we" always knew would happen back in the '80s with our little hobbiest microcomputers waxing poetic about the future). With the market so important, Congress is going to get involved eventually... mainly at the prodding of lobbyists from other industries touched by the expanding IT market. It makes sense that Microsoft would decide to have its views put in the ears of Congress as well.
Does this mean Congress-critters are demanding payouts? I'm not so sure its exactly that (although I would expect it is accurate in some cases). But I am positive you're not going to be well represented if those that would represent your view are unaware of what that view is. Or even worse... people with an opposing view have managed to convince your favorite Congress-critter that reality lines up with their viewpoint (queue this post's theme song).
I wouldn't be so sure. Look at history... look at what's going on now... and then see who believes in zero-sum gamesmanship. I'm not sure what you consider an average Slashdotter but it seems to me that when Microsoft is accused of being "evil" it is about their strategy of forcing a zero-sum game - of engineered incompatibilities and product lock-in (with the exception of their recent legal strategies). It's the Slashdot rant that's calling for an honest reality and doing away with these forced zero-sum shenanigans. Microsoft has only to do it. They don't.
Granted - that doesn't mean Microsoft doesn't understand the situation. But it doesn't make them any more insightful than your "average slashdotter." Even the more rabid bandwagon-hopping variety.
Do you have a reference to this? It seems to me that one could just as effectively waiver any warranty while abandoning copyright as placing the waiver inside a license which negates most copyright restrictions. Liability and copyright are two very distinctive things. But maybe I'm missing something.
How much of that is "GPL2" and how much is stated as "GPL2 or later"?
Why not simply release your code to the public domain?
You might want to complete that quote:
(my emphasis)
Say - you don't suppose the interest in Iraq's oil might have something to do with funding the rebuilding of Iraq?
Cute video. Some simple truths. And a really simplistic view of world politics. But it was entertaining. I'm thinking it goes over real well in propaganda circles.
Which in an unto itself isn't that bad. The problem is that most if not all his blog entries are just links to the original information source with a rehash of the information source. There's no insightful commentary, critique, or audience participation to add value to the piece. It'd be more useful to just look at the guy's blog link... find the real information source linked within... and then link THAT instead. But I guess that would ruin the game.
I'm not directly familiar with Russian politics... but it might be. ;)
You're probably right. All that child pornography they found unencrypted must've been a red herring.
It seems it is, in fact, possible to be too smart for your own good.
Well - you've got to keep in mind the context of our discussion. We were going out to lunch and I'm not exactly sure how it started... but I was mentioning Zimmerman's woes over PGP and she said "oh yeah - I was one of the investigators on that one." We then talked a bit about the good and bad uses of PGP (she had always seen PGP as nefarious until coming to work for our group). And when the conversation progressed to what she was doing after the PGP investigation she mentioned her years of investigating child pornography rings. I couldn't help linking the two parts of our conversation together with the question of how many of the badguys she investigated used encryption... and how many specifically used PGP. That's when she noted that the guys she investigated weren't very advanced when it came to information technology ("They just weren't that smart.").
I'm sure there are "smart" purveyors of kiddie porn. Almost any crime involves at least a small percentage of knowledgeable, intelligent criminals. Maybe her group just didn't catch any. But that's not the point. The important thing to consider is that for this particular criminal culture, encryption wasn't a part of the standard tool set. And one of the assumed evils of PGP hadn't come to pass.
How many criminals believe they're going to get caught? And how many people (who aren't even criminals) have the right mindset to handle security issues? I would say the answer to both are "very few". Having said that... my impression is that encryption is much more commonplace among kiddie porn rings. I don't track criminal cases involving child pornography. But I do occasionally discuss cases where a system has been compromised and used for trafficking illicit data (child porn, warez, financial information, etc.). It is becoming more and more common to find that data in encrypted archives.
And that seems to be the point - how many of these types actually know how to use touch or find... much less put together a perl script? By "hobbiest" they're not talking about our level of knowledge... they're talking average punk who thinks double-clicking a rootkit is advanced hacking. Criminals aren't always the sharpest crayons in the box.
I met one of the FBI agents involved in the investigation of Zimmerman over PGP. After that case, she moved on to child pornography cases. I asked her how many times they ran in to PGP being used by people trading in kiddie porn. Not a single one. She noted that the folks they were busting just weren't smart enough to understand that kind of thing.
That basic precautions are showing up enough to give investigators a problem says something both about the attackers and the investigations.
The more details come to light... the more I'm wondering what Novell got out of this deal.
I don't think this is an attempt to seek permission or validation. I see a much more interesting angle to the question. I touched on this in an earlier post in this thread.
It occurs to me that Tolkien's work to create a modern mythology was largely wasted by the tools available in his time. Sure - he took on the role of a traditional story teller with an epic tale set in the world he outlined. But his narration read like a travel log as much as a story at times. And the background information he developed was far deeper than his more famous works.
It is almost as if Tolkien was hampered by the tools he had available. His works were beyond the simple narrative. Beyond even the visual effects Jackson had available to bring that narrative (or an adaptation thereof) to life on the screen. Tolkien didn't just write stories... or even mythology. He wrote source material. What would he have thought of the ability to take every aspect of his work and make them available in an interactive experience of an MMORP? Would thousands of individuals' stories offend the story teller in him? Or would the complexity of an artificial world appeal to his interest in crafting a complete mythology?
Pity the question is a moot point.
I agree that it would cover those sort of things. However, there's quite a conceptual difference between Chess or Monopoly and LOTRO. And that's no small consideration. There's a large leap from the very old tradition of telling a story to acting out a story with players, props, etc. We've become accustomed to the change. And we're now in the middle of a new concept where the individual can now be a part of a story... no longer imagining a sequence of events or witnessing them being acted out.
To me, that's the basis of the question. What does a story teller think of their world being a backdrop to an individual's own story rather than the backdrop to their own crafted storyline? Especially a story teller who seemed to enjoy crafting that backdrop even more than the story they told.
Most people didn't know about computer games in 1968. Most associations with computers and games would likely bring up tic-tac-toe or chess in the public's mind. There was a small subculture of hackers working to lay foundations of the video game during this time period (Spacewar), it would still be a couple years before the industry was born (pong and spacewar adaptations). I would be very surprised if computer games would have even entered the minds of anyone involved in negotiating this deal.