Has she had her eyes examined or checked at all. I sometimes feel sick (dizzy, loss of strength, etc) when I look at a CRT, especially ones that run at a low frequency (50-70hz). LCDs are easier on my eyes as well. It might not be in her mind so much as a combination of her eyes and mind. Just like some people can not look at flashing red lights, and can even go into a siezure.
Not only are they less likely to modify TTL, but the need to do so for popular content is not that necesary, the more popular the content the more people will download and share the download with others. Sort of a user based way of propogating media across the internet (while Freenet does it automaticly).
* only freedom from pre-punishment in most cases (except when the FBI or CIA doesnt want you publishing their classified information), you can be sued or thrown in jail after the fact. Does not apply in a theatre when you well "fire", even though the threat of a fire in modern theatres is extremely low. You can not say bad things about people in an edited environment that has credibility or not the context of a parody or joke. And finally you can not distribute/copy speech if it is copyright or trademarked unless its for archival purposes. Other then that speech is, relatively speaking of course and in no way absolute, free here in the US:).
Does that quote mean that some things are hard wired and others are soft wired, or that they all exist somewhere between. I kind of figured there was some hard wiring, as you just can't lump a bunch of neurons and have intelegence even if you try to teach it, it would probably take much longer. Some amount of hard wiring would also explain why some characteristics of people are the same from inheritance of genes. Anyway, I kind of wish that article about the Neurochips explained why relationships are strengthened rather then just that they are.
They want connectivity first, then speed, then glitz. Besides, the typical uses of a palmtop don't extend to high-end computing. Having 1 Ghz under the hood isn't going to allow you to write your term paper any faster.
I'd argue that palmtops are not really designed for writing term papers (I can understand writing small notes, but a whole term paper on a palmtop would be take to long). A laptop is probably the better way to do that. But you are right that connectivity is more important then speed, but having more speed will help with several things, video conferencing from a palmtop device would be real nice, rather then sending simple messages. Being able to watch news from the web rather then read it, is also interesting.
Vastly overhyped. The intensity of OLEDs fade with time. When compared next to TFT, they look like shit, perform like shit, and go bad far quicker than TFT. They're also more expensive to produce. It'll be a novelty, but, it wont go anywhere in the end, IMHO.
I'm a little confused here, I thought TFT (Thin-Film Transisters) were something to be used with LCDs and OLEDs? Maybe you can provide actual information about it?
What good is a teleconference if only one person at a time can talk? If more than one person starts talking, you might as well be listening to a washing machine.
I agree with that there is no point in seeing who you are conferencing with, but having visuals (charts, slides etc) in a conference is very important in expressing ideas, as well as being able to point at things with in the visuals, that is linking the speech with things in a visual is also important. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. But dont get me wrong I agree that this is not something worth mentioning.
Here we go again, failing to learn from history. People, its like this -- Programmers dont think alike. You hit the nail on the head. I think technology in the future will make it easier for people to work together not through forcing them to work in a uniform environment, but allowing them to work the way they have to, to get things done, and then translating it so that others may understand. More of an advancement in compiler like technology, bidirectional translation technology, that will allow you to translate to diffrent languages/codes.
Big clue for ya, gang--99.9% of your PC's lifespan is spent waiting for your lazy human ass to tell it what to do.
I dont think you get it. That 0.1% could be multiple tasks that are require to be done in a short period of time. In the real world humans also have to deal with maniac humans who like to get things done in short periods of time in order to yank out as much of the cost of doing things as much possible. Its irritating but its something we have to live with.
Hyperthreading assumes that Moore's Law will flatline.
Not exactly, hyperthreading can be said to be a part of Moore's Law, not against it. If certain technologies flat line, doesnt mean Moore's Law has flat lined, it simply means we get performance by other means.
I would hope the future would bring a P2P network that pays you to distribute files and information and do computing tasks, which would include the P2P for programmers.
For GUI optimization, I think the GUIs we have currently are the product of our input devices. That is the mouse and keyboard, effect the graphical user interface. Have more interesting input devices can allow for new intuitive interfaces. Like 3d motion tracking will definetly allow for more interesting GUIs, for one thing I am dying for more desktop space, and my gut feeling is I would like to have an HMD with motion tracking and a motion tracked stylus/mouse like device, and be able to have a 360 degree desktop.
I never had those problems (crashing or nag screens) unless I did something stupid, and I have been using it for over 3 years, and only spammed a few times with in the last year, less then the times I have been spammed in IRC and AOL. ICQ was the internet alternative to using AOL for messaging, when I first started using it, there was no Yahoo IM or MSIM, or AIM for that matter (in order to use aol messaging you had to have an aol account), the other alternative was IRC which really was not designed for instant messaging more so then chatting.
With credit cards, it all comes down to insurance, and the more people rip them off, the higher the insurance rates become, and that increases the cost of using credit cards.
With intellectual property, we are dealing with an market that has grown dependant on an system that is fundamentally flawed. "Piracy" as most people refer to it is actually *sharing for free*, which itself is not good because there is a lot of money lost, and the value of that information because less as the user can not resell it to others so they give it away for free, not good at all.
What is really needed is to go from an intellectual property market, to an information market. Where everyone can sell information to each other. The originators of information can charge a higher price as the case is a matter of extreme scarcity (no other entity has that information except the originator). To which once the originator sells that information, those who pay the high price will in turn sell several copies for a lower price and make some profit, and those who buy this will also be able to resell it. Another aspect to this is also investment, if an originator is popular they may recieve a substantial investment, people who are playing the market in order to make a profit later, similar in some aspects to the stock market. The market is completely competitive, distributors compete (as oposed to an cartels forming like RIAA etc) to sell information AND to buy information, that means the originator will have several distributors bidding to be among the first to recieve the information.
Its also to control the competition. You want to make sure no one makes a game like yours, using your own game engine. If you notice there is no fixed licensing fees, or at least up front id and epic dont say how much a license will be or whether you are eligible for a license, they want flexibility and to control this decision. I find most game companies that license their engine, have this same attitude about it.
> The risk is that some company would rip them off by developing some game that used the engine and failing to GPL it.
Ooooo, But that would be illegal. When was the last time you saw someone release linux with out releasing the source code or referencing it from some where else? Rarely and the problem is usually corrected immediately. VirtualDub is the only other case I have heard about someone releasing GPL code with out the source code, but even that was settled easily.
> If they do GPL the game (and they would have to GPL the whole game, go read the GPL if you doubt this), very few people would buy this GPL game.
"GPL the game", or GPL the game engine? When you say "game" you are defining it way to broadly. You dont seem to understand the GPL, or at least you seem to be transfixed on the FUD that GPL is a virus. GPL can link to proprietary modules/media, but propreitary modules/media can not link to it or use pieces of it with out it becoming GPL as well (if you use GPL code, you must GPL, if your GPL code uses other code it doesnt). The game engine is the one that loads and uses the game media. Also, note that YOU ARE THE LICENSER NOT THE LICENSEE, you can add and make exceptions with in license, that is how trolltech resolved several problems. There was some license incompatibilities with the GPL, so trolltech solved the problem by making exceptions. Also note that even john carmack says, that while the Quake2 source is GPL, the content is not. If you think John Carmack is wrong, start web site and distribute the content and lets see if your right.
Another thing to think about, is that even if they GPL the whole game (including the media), that would mean any body can *sell* that game to any one else, rather then just giving it away for free. If they were popular enough, distributors may pay a lot of money to be the first to distribute the game (imagine making millions selling a few copies of a game in which the people who bought those copies can also make millions, eventually the price of the price of the game goes down until normal people are buying it and giving it away for free). Anyone can make money selling a game, there is less reason for people to give it away for free (less legal issues holding them back). This doesnt work for linux currently, because its not on par yet with its competitors like Windows for the mass market, versus the niche markets, not that linux is not doing well.
> The real problem is if someone ignored the GPL and just produced the game. Id would have to prove that they were using thier engine and successfully litigate them. Not easy.
Its easy to prove. Even the VirtualDub author was able to find it, when they were not using the whole thing, only certain parts in its filtering. Also how far would someone want to go is another issue, if someone copies a small 5 line for loop from your code, is that something you really want to persue? But in such a case you would expect those 5 lines would either be coincidental or even if they were not, they would be a little tuffer to detect. Besides you dont want to sue someone for copying code that is commonly available either, only code that is unique to your design, that is the importance of intellectual property after all. You dont want to copyright, patent, or trademark something that is common and in most cases you can not do that (your intellectual property would be forfeited in a court of law).
They are more likely to care if, the complainers have an organization backing them up, and/or have a lot of money. (its obviously better to have that money working for you then against you). This includes corporate lobbys as well as religious based lobbys (christians jews etc).
If there is one thing to know about human nature, someone has to make a mess before someone else has to clean it. It would be nice if people were more intelegent about it, be visionaries and be able to guess what the future is going to be like if we keep going the direction we are going, but people are lazy when it comes to these things, I dont mean lazy in a bad way, its just people don't have the time or want to spend the time to learn something that will take years before it makes a diffrence if it makes a diffrence at all. In reality the majority of people have to see a change and diffrence before they realize something effects them. Its like something I read a long time ago from Michael Ambrash (sp?), he said he went from graphics/game programming to a more experimental area of computer programming in I think it was speech recognition or something like that, but he said he liked the graphics programming more because you get direct feedback, that is he did something and it made a noticable diffrence, when people go to a voting booth and vote, there is no immediate diffrence, their lives are not going to be changed in a largely noticable way. They may feel good about it after they vote, but after a while the majority will likely forget as they deal with the details of their lives.
I agree poemofatic in that the license does not really apply to the user of the software more so to the distributors (DLA is probably more appropriate then EULA), plus it doesnt really apply to modification at all, only when it comes to distributing modifications (again distributors not end users).
A better way, and the way I learned how to look at stereo images (divergence/parallel not convergence/crossed), is to place your index finger tips together in front of your face about 2 feet away, then look far away ignoring your fingers, quickly switch your eyes back to your fingers with out changing the position of your eyes, you will see a weiner (hot dog looking) thing floating between your fingers as an illusion, try to keep it that way as long as you can, and even try changing the size of it by moving your eye balls, eventually you will be able to do it by thinking about it (its like looking far away with out focusing far away).
Another issue I have come across is with cracks. For the most part cracks can be good for *paying* customers. Even though they are used by warez, I've come across situations where I have used cracks, or wanted to use them. One time I was installing Softimage|3d and Maya on the same computer, but one of them used an older version of flexlm (actually it was something about the node locking software that caused the problem), which made it so both dongles could not exist on the same port. I would have loved to have used cracks on these systems, unfortunetly these systems were being set up to be sold to someone else, so we had to do some lame switcher program, which flexlm still didnt like to much (it would complain about softimage as it polled every so often), basicly it was a horrible mess. I dont think softimage and alias/wavefront made things uncompatible on purpose, but either way cracks would have helped, if those were my computers I would have cracked them and save the hassle. Cracks are also helpful for annoying games that require the cd rom to be in the drive, I had an cheap cd rom drive that would heat up if the cd rom was accessed to long, and I decided to crack a game in order to prevent the accessing, and also again it gets rid of the annoying situation of having to keep swapping cdroms when I have to do diffrent things on my computer.
> Of course, the 3d companies can always rely on idiots like the people where I work who bough a copy of LightWave (~$2400) just to make buttons for web pages, and never could figure it out.
Ouch, I dont know if you recall, but South Park animators bought Maya to do 2d characts. It wasnt that bad of a decision, although I would imagine buying lightwave for buttons for web pages sounds a bit more then excentric.:)
> While you say "government" defined ideas as property, I believe is it more correct that "copyright" is merely the patent on ideas as reproduced. The theory of property and rights already existed, governments were formed to provide a framework to defend those rights.
You are confusing the issue here. I am refering to the word "theft", which is basicly "to take property with out permission". Information is not *real*, it is an impression, an etching, reflection, or what ever you prefer, of what is *real*. Information is stored on a medium (cd rom, hard disk, brain cells, etc), the owner of that information naturally is the medium, if you destroy the medium you destroy the information, so the medium owns the information, and who ever owns the medium also owns the information.
> My labor, the source of all property and ownership, is spent on producing "ideas" exactly the same as my labor is spent producing "carvings", or "instructions", or "baskets", or "paintings".
Yes, but that does not mean that the only way to make money is through copyright laws. The natural way of making money is realized when you take into account that if you are the *first* owner of information, then that is an extreme case of scarcity of that information, and you can charge a high price for access to this information. The obvious solution is that someone buys that information off of you, and sells as many copies as they can. Pure competition of distribution, with copyright laws there are monopolies on distribution which inflates prices and causes things like piracy and free trade of information, rather then people trying to sell information as they would naturally. There is no information market, instead it is replace by an IP market controled by the government. If you note copyrights are failing and technology is eroding it, and the only solution foreseeble in the future is an information market, not an intellectual property market.
> Since I own what I produce, I can transfer it as I see fit.
And any one else whom you transfer it to is also can transfer it as they see fit.
> Patent/Copyright is the legal protection of my property, that it will retain those properties and conditions under which I agreed to transfer posession of that property for a limitted time so that I benefit from it.
Of course, but again that does not necesarily mean people who do transfer it are necesarily unethical. And with out copyrights its still possible for people to benefit from it, since again if you are the only owner of this information that is an extreme case of scarcity and you can charge a high price to distributors who in turn sell it to sell and transfer copies to other people as they see fit. That would be an honest system.
> The abuse of copyright, as has been mentioned as effectively kept Disney Corp a perpetual sole source license on that mouse, is what is causing all these problems. Physical patent and "copyright" have diverged, creating a false distinction between the two.
Point taken. I don't necesarily think copyrights and patents should be abolished right now. I think in the foreseeable future technology could change things considerably, not unlike napster did, although napster is going the wrong direction, in that sharing files for free is wrong and detrimental to any type of information/IP market. A sort of napster where people pay for the things they download and make money from sharing files, has a lot of potential to become a information market that could replace copyrights. But until the technology is developed, I dont think IP should be abandonded.
Again copyrights create distribution monopolies, which create cartels like the RIAA, who fix prices. The RIAA has been busted in the past for doing just that, as they unified the majority of vendors and gave them advertising benefits for fixing the prices.
> Taking someones property against their will is theft, I don't care if it's taxes, or software piracy, or mugging, or even real on-the-ocean-using-ships-and-guns piracy.
Well, its all about how you define property. Government opted to define "intelectual property" as property of the copyright holder. They could have very well decided to define information property as it is naturally defined, which is the property of the holder. Its theft in the sense that its been defined as "property", but its not necesarily unethical, legal and illegal does not always equal ethical and unethical, or moral and immoral. If someone is using software and finds it useful or makes money from it, that is unethical, if on the other hand someone doesnt like the software they try before they buy, or they are dirt poor and can not afford to buy it either way, then its not unethical (they wouldnt have paid for it in the first place).
In fact, in natural ownship of information, if I *have* information, and someone tells me to delete that information, or tells me not to share that information, can be unethical. For example if someone witnesses a crime or is molested and the criminal tells me not to share that information by force, then it becomes unethical for them to hold me back. That is why freedom of speech was created in the first place, to make it wrong to hold back information. The founding fathers in particular Thomas Jefferson, understood this and that is why he was hestitant in defining how information property would work, but he compromised at the promise of fair use rights and the time limit, which today is being trampled on left and right, and the time limit is extended by a lot more then our founding fathers wanted simply at the profits of a corporations like disney (they wanted more time to milk the cow, rape mickey and then let the public have him).
> Where does the money come from to PAY those programmers? From software sales. Reductions in those sales, because of theft of simply no one buying, means those programmers don't get paid.
If *no one* is buying the software, its because the software sucks face it, its more likely some people buy the software whether they use the warez version or not. This is why share ware and demos are done and still are done to this day, in order to allow people to try before they buy. The reason why a lot of companies opt out of shareware versions of their product these days is because users can download warez versions to try out before they buy, plus their user base may already be aware of their software and they dont need to promote it that much.
Another issue I have come across is that cracks which are created to remove protection from software, are used by legitimate users in order to get rid of anoying copy protection. I've done this on one occasion myself, because my cd rom drive was getting old and was producing a lot of heat, so I installed a full game and cracked it so it would not need the cd rom in the drive any more to play the game. Other people are annoyed and or dont trust dongles. But dongle software tends to be the more expensive kind of software and they are not interested in wasting resources persuing college kids trading their software on line, their main concern is studios who are making money off their license but not buying a lot of licenses. But cracks are a diffrent topic all together, although I dont recall if DOD was a cracking group or a warez group or both (I do recall seeing their name somewhere).
If you think the government protects us programmers you got to be kidding. What they did will probably scare some people, but it won't stop warez, or other copyright infringement. The reality of the matter is, the reason warez exists is because it is like speech, its as easy to transfer from one computer to another as it is for me to talk in someone elses ear. That is why it exists. Things like copy protection, and FBI raids, do little to stop piracy, it will reduce it here in the United States. And the primary target was ONE warez group, there are hundreds of them if not more smaller ones.
As a programmer, I look at this as laughable, and yet sad, because its a waste of tax money and resources, that could have been allocated to something more useful. The only reason I can see them doing this, is a demonstration that they are trying to do something and to scare people away from warez, but that certainly hasnt worked so far as I have seen in their past raids and even in the case of Napster and other file sharing programs, there wasnt a huge reduction after people heard about the raids.
Also, as I understand it, Alias Wavefront and other companies like them, dont care if some people download warez. There top priority is the studios who use their software to make money but are not spending that money on their licenses, as a matter of a fact they dont mind if someone learns how to use the software on a warez version because that is a larger user base, which means the studios who hire them will have workers experienced in their software. Because the studios are where a lot of their profit comes from. It doesnt come from some hackers/crackers trading files and kudos on the internet.
A lot of software developers, either have used or tried warez at one point or know someone who has. I've heard about some software developers having relationships with warez groups and even requesting them not to release the cracks right away. So this raid is not on behalf of all software developers.
Its definetly a waste of money and resources, but you know why this happened, its all to show off power. The FBI wants to show off that its doing something, the software associations like IDSA show off that they are doing something, so they can get more software developers to join. Its all end of the year, posturing. Aschroft has to scare away some of it.
> One of the definitions of arrogance is to downplay a truly genius application by saying it's "not a major leap".
In my opinion its not a major leap because it only enhances previous devices. And saying its not being a major leap does not downplay it in the least, it places it in perspective. It definetly is a great idea, because its very effecient, no special hardware or requirements, it takes a little and does a lot for a previous existing device, but that does not mean its a major leap. More inventive does not mean a major leap. Going to the moon is a major leap, creating a cure for cancer is a major leap, enhancing a device is not a major leap, despite it being genius.
> Has anybody thought to try and come up with a characterization of the typical Slashdotter?
Yeah, but they fall on their faces (jut like you), because slashdot is diverse and finding "the typical" is not an easy thing to do, not only that but the people who try to do this forget they are a slashdotter too.
> It seems more and more that there's more self-serving arrogance here than anywhere else.
Slashdot Mirror
Has she had her eyes examined or checked at all. I sometimes feel sick (dizzy, loss of strength, etc) when I look at a CRT, especially ones that run at a low frequency (50-70hz). LCDs are easier on my eyes as well. It might not be in her mind so much as a combination of her eyes and mind. Just like some people can not look at flashing red lights, and can even go into a siezure.
Actually it could easily be just an acronym change like... WinAMP (Windows AOL Music PLayer).
Not only are they less likely to modify TTL, but the need to do so for popular content is not that necesary, the more popular the content the more people will download and share the download with others. Sort of a user based way of propogating media across the internet (while Freenet does it automaticly).
That sucks, what next, advertisement as reviews?
"In the US there is freedom of speech*."
:).
* only freedom from pre-punishment in most cases (except when the FBI or CIA doesnt want you publishing their classified information), you can be sued or thrown in jail after the fact. Does not apply in a theatre when you well "fire", even though the threat of a fire in modern theatres is extremely low. You can not say bad things about people in an edited environment that has credibility or not the context of a parody or joke. And finally you can not distribute/copy speech if it is copyright or trademarked unless its for archival purposes. Other then that speech is, relatively speaking of course and in no way absolute, free here in the US
Not rude, polite. Christ, is the collective negativity of this place declining or what?
Does that quote mean that some things are hard wired and others are soft wired, or that they all exist somewhere between. I kind of figured there was some hard wiring, as you just can't lump a bunch of neurons and have intelegence even if you try to teach it, it would probably take much longer. Some amount of hard wiring would also explain why some characteristics of people are the same from inheritance of genes. Anyway, I kind of wish that article about the Neurochips explained why relationships are strengthened rather then just that they are.
They want connectivity first, then speed, then glitz. Besides, the typical uses of a palmtop don't extend to high-end computing. Having 1 Ghz under the hood isn't going to allow you to write your term paper any faster.
I'd argue that palmtops are not really designed for writing term papers (I can understand writing small notes, but a whole term paper on a palmtop would be take to long). A laptop is probably the better way to do that. But you are right that connectivity is more important then speed, but having more speed will help with several things, video conferencing from a palmtop device would be real nice, rather then sending simple messages. Being able to watch news from the web rather then read it, is also interesting.
Vastly overhyped. The intensity of OLEDs fade with time. When compared next to TFT, they look like shit, perform like shit, and go bad far quicker than TFT. They're also more expensive to produce. It'll be a novelty, but, it wont go anywhere in the end, IMHO.
I'm a little confused here, I thought TFT (Thin-Film Transisters) were something to be used with LCDs and OLEDs? Maybe you can provide actual information about it?
What good is a teleconference if only one person at a time can talk? If more than one person starts talking, you might as well be listening to a washing machine.
I agree with that there is no point in seeing who you are conferencing with, but having visuals (charts, slides etc) in a conference is very important in expressing ideas, as well as being able to point at things with in the visuals, that is linking the speech with things in a visual is also important. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. But dont get me wrong I agree that this is not something worth mentioning.
Here we go again, failing to learn from history. People, its like this -- Programmers dont think alike.
You hit the nail on the head. I think technology in the future will make it easier for people to work together not through forcing them to work in a uniform environment, but allowing them to work the way they have to, to get things done, and then translating it so that others may understand. More of an advancement in compiler like technology, bidirectional translation technology, that will allow you to translate to diffrent languages/codes.
Big clue for ya, gang--99.9% of your PC's lifespan is spent waiting for your lazy human ass to tell it what to do.
I dont think you get it. That 0.1% could be multiple tasks that are require to be done in a short period of time. In the real world humans also have to deal with maniac humans who like to get things done in short periods of time in order to yank out as much of the cost of doing things as much possible. Its irritating but its something we have to live with.
Hyperthreading assumes that Moore's Law will flatline.
Not exactly, hyperthreading can be said to be a part of Moore's Law, not against it. If certain technologies flat line, doesnt mean Moore's Law has flat lined, it simply means we get performance by other means.
I would hope the future would bring a P2P network that pays you to distribute files and information and do computing tasks, which would include the P2P for programmers.
For GUI optimization, I think the GUIs we have currently are the product of our input devices. That is the mouse and keyboard, effect the graphical user interface. Have more interesting input devices can allow for new intuitive interfaces. Like 3d motion tracking will definetly allow for more interesting GUIs, for one thing I am dying for more desktop space, and my gut feeling is I would like to have an HMD with motion tracking and a motion tracked stylus/mouse like device, and be able to have a 360 degree desktop.
I never had those problems (crashing or nag screens) unless I did something stupid, and I have been using it for over 3 years, and only spammed a few times with in the last year, less then the times I have been spammed in IRC and AOL. ICQ was the internet alternative to using AOL for messaging, when I first started using it, there was no Yahoo IM or MSIM, or AIM for that matter (in order to use aol messaging you had to have an aol account), the other alternative was IRC which really was not designed for instant messaging more so then chatting.
With credit cards, it all comes down to insurance, and the more people rip them off, the higher the insurance rates become, and that increases the cost of using credit cards.
With intellectual property, we are dealing with an market that has grown dependant on an system that is fundamentally flawed. "Piracy" as most people refer to it is actually *sharing for free*, which itself is not good because there is a lot of money lost, and the value of that information because less as the user can not resell it to others so they give it away for free, not good at all.
What is really needed is to go from an intellectual property market, to an information market. Where everyone can sell information to each other. The originators of information can charge a higher price as the case is a matter of extreme scarcity (no other entity has that information except the originator). To which once the originator sells that information, those who pay the high price will in turn sell several copies for a lower price and make some profit, and those who buy this will also be able to resell it. Another aspect to this is also investment, if an originator is popular they may recieve a substantial investment, people who are playing the market in order to make a profit later, similar in some aspects to the stock market. The market is completely competitive, distributors compete (as oposed to an cartels forming like RIAA etc) to sell information AND to buy information, that means the originator will have several distributors bidding to be among the first to recieve the information.
Its also to control the competition. You want to make sure no one makes a game like yours, using your own game engine. If you notice there is no fixed licensing fees, or at least up front id and epic dont say how much a license will be or whether you are eligible for a license, they want flexibility and to control this decision. I find most game companies that license their engine, have this same attitude about it.
> The risk is that some company would rip them off by developing some game that used the engine and failing to GPL it.
Ooooo, But that would be illegal. When was the last time you saw someone release linux with out releasing the source code or referencing it from some where else? Rarely and the problem is usually corrected immediately. VirtualDub is the only other case I have heard about someone releasing GPL code with out the source code, but even that was settled easily.
> If they do GPL the game (and they would have to GPL the whole game, go read the GPL if you doubt this), very few people would buy this GPL game.
"GPL the game", or GPL the game engine? When you say "game" you are defining it way to broadly. You dont seem to understand the GPL, or at least you seem to be transfixed on the FUD that GPL is a virus. GPL can link to proprietary modules/media, but propreitary modules/media can not link to it or use pieces of it with out it becoming GPL as well (if you use GPL code, you must GPL, if your GPL code uses other code it doesnt). The game engine is the one that loads and uses the game media. Also, note that YOU ARE THE LICENSER NOT THE LICENSEE, you can add and make exceptions with in license, that is how trolltech resolved several problems. There was some license incompatibilities with the GPL, so trolltech solved the problem by making exceptions. Also note that even john carmack says, that while the Quake2 source is GPL, the content is not. If you think John Carmack is wrong, start web site and distribute the content and lets see if your right.
Another thing to think about, is that even if they GPL the whole game (including the media), that would mean any body can *sell* that game to any one else, rather then just giving it away for free. If they were popular enough, distributors may pay a lot of money to be the first to distribute the game (imagine making millions selling a few copies of a game in which the people who bought those copies can also make millions, eventually the price of the price of the game goes down until normal people are buying it and giving it away for free). Anyone can make money selling a game, there is less reason for people to give it away for free (less legal issues holding them back). This doesnt work for linux currently, because its not on par yet with its competitors like Windows for the mass market, versus the niche markets, not that linux is not doing well.
> The real problem is if someone ignored the GPL and just produced the game. Id would have to prove that they were using thier engine and successfully litigate them. Not easy.
Its easy to prove. Even the VirtualDub author was able to find it, when they were not using the whole thing, only certain parts in its filtering. Also how far would someone want to go is another issue, if someone copies a small 5 line for loop from your code, is that something you really want to persue? But in such a case you would expect those 5 lines would either be coincidental or even if they were not, they would be a little tuffer to detect. Besides you dont want to sue someone for copying code that is commonly available either, only code that is unique to your design, that is the importance of intellectual property after all. You dont want to copyright, patent, or trademark something that is common and in most cases you can not do that (your intellectual property would be forfeited in a court of law).
They are more likely to care if, the complainers have an organization backing them up, and/or have a lot of money. (its obviously better to have that money working for you then against you). This includes corporate lobbys as well as religious based lobbys (christians jews etc).
If there is one thing to know about human nature, someone has to make a mess before someone else has to clean it. It would be nice if people were more intelegent about it, be visionaries and be able to guess what the future is going to be like if we keep going the direction we are going, but people are lazy when it comes to these things, I dont mean lazy in a bad way, its just people don't have the time or want to spend the time to learn something that will take years before it makes a diffrence if it makes a diffrence at all. In reality the majority of people have to see a change and diffrence before they realize something effects them. Its like something I read a long time ago from Michael Ambrash (sp?), he said he went from graphics/game programming to a more experimental area of computer programming in I think it was speech recognition or something like that, but he said he liked the graphics programming more because you get direct feedback, that is he did something and it made a noticable diffrence, when people go to a voting booth and vote, there is no immediate diffrence, their lives are not going to be changed in a largely noticable way. They may feel good about it after they vote, but after a while the majority will likely forget as they deal with the details of their lives.
I agree poemofatic in that the license does not really apply to the user of the software more so to the distributors (DLA is probably more appropriate then EULA), plus it doesnt really apply to modification at all, only when it comes to distributing modifications (again distributors not end users).
You have to remember folks, a window works 2 ways, you can look out and (aparently) people can look in.
Don't you really mean, "he should have stayed quite so we would have had more time hacking in peoples systems :)"???
A better way, and the way I learned how to look at stereo images (divergence/parallel not convergence/crossed), is to place your index finger tips together in front of your face about 2 feet away, then look far away ignoring your fingers, quickly switch your eyes back to your fingers with out changing the position of your eyes, you will see a weiner (hot dog looking) thing floating between your fingers as an illusion, try to keep it that way as long as you can, and even try changing the size of it by moving your eye balls, eventually you will be able to do it by thinking about it (its like looking far away with out focusing far away).
What I would like to know is how they plan to deal with specular reflection. Even the human eye has to deal with it.
Another issue I have come across is with cracks. For the most part cracks can be good for *paying* customers. Even though they are used by warez, I've come across situations where I have used cracks, or wanted to use them. One time I was installing Softimage|3d and Maya on the same computer, but one of them used an older version of flexlm (actually it was something about the node locking software that caused the problem), which made it so both dongles could not exist on the same port. I would have loved to have used cracks on these systems, unfortunetly these systems were being set up to be sold to someone else, so we had to do some lame switcher program, which flexlm still didnt like to much (it would complain about softimage as it polled every so often), basicly it was a horrible mess. I dont think softimage and alias/wavefront made things uncompatible on purpose, but either way cracks would have helped, if those were my computers I would have cracked them and save the hassle. Cracks are also helpful for annoying games that require the cd rom to be in the drive, I had an cheap cd rom drive that would heat up if the cd rom was accessed to long, and I decided to crack a game in order to prevent the accessing, and also again it gets rid of the annoying situation of having to keep swapping cdroms when I have to do diffrent things on my computer.
> Of course, the 3d companies can always rely on idiots like the people where I work who bough a copy of LightWave (~$2400) just to make buttons for web pages, and never could figure it out.
Ouch, I dont know if you recall, but South Park animators bought Maya to do 2d characts. It wasnt that bad of a decision, although I would imagine buying lightwave for buttons for web pages sounds a bit more then excentric.
> While you say "government" defined ideas as property, I believe is it more correct that "copyright" is merely the patent on ideas as reproduced. The theory of property and rights already existed, governments were formed to provide a framework to defend those rights.
You are confusing the issue here. I am refering to the word "theft", which is basicly "to take property with out permission". Information is not *real*, it is an impression, an etching, reflection, or what ever you prefer, of what is *real*. Information is stored on a medium (cd rom, hard disk, brain cells, etc), the owner of that information naturally is the medium, if you destroy the medium you destroy the information, so the medium owns the information, and who ever owns the medium also owns the information.
> My labor, the source of all property and ownership, is spent on producing "ideas" exactly the same as my labor is spent producing "carvings", or "instructions", or "baskets", or "paintings".
Yes, but that does not mean that the only way to make money is through copyright laws. The natural way of making money is realized when you take into account that if you are the *first* owner of information, then that is an extreme case of scarcity of that information, and you can charge a high price for access to this information. The obvious solution is that someone buys that information off of you, and sells as many copies as they can. Pure competition of distribution, with copyright laws there are monopolies on distribution which inflates prices and causes things like piracy and free trade of information, rather then people trying to sell information as they would naturally. There is no information market, instead it is replace by an IP market controled by the government. If you note copyrights are failing and technology is eroding it, and the only solution foreseeble in the future is an information market, not an intellectual property market.
> Since I own what I produce, I can transfer it as I see fit.
And any one else whom you transfer it to is also can transfer it as they see fit.
> Patent/Copyright is the legal protection of my property, that it will retain those properties and conditions under which I agreed to transfer posession of that property for a limitted time so that I benefit from it.
Of course, but again that does not necesarily mean people who do transfer it are necesarily unethical. And with out copyrights its still possible for people to benefit from it, since again if you are the only owner of this information that is an extreme case of scarcity and you can charge a high price to distributors who in turn sell it to sell and transfer copies to other people as they see fit. That would be an honest system.
> The abuse of copyright, as has been mentioned as effectively kept Disney Corp a perpetual sole source license on that mouse, is what is causing all these problems. Physical patent and "copyright" have diverged, creating a false distinction between the two.
Point taken. I don't necesarily think copyrights and patents should be abolished right now. I think in the foreseeable future technology could change things considerably, not unlike napster did, although napster is going the wrong direction, in that sharing files for free is wrong and detrimental to any type of information/IP market. A sort of napster where people pay for the things they download and make money from sharing files, has a lot of potential to become a information market that could replace copyrights. But until the technology is developed, I dont think IP should be abandonded.
Again copyrights create distribution monopolies, which create cartels like the RIAA, who fix prices. The RIAA has been busted in the past for doing just that, as they unified the majority of vendors and gave them advertising benefits for fixing the prices.
> Taking someones property against their will is theft, I don't care if it's taxes, or software piracy, or mugging, or even real on-the-ocean-using-ships-and-guns piracy.
Well, its all about how you define property. Government opted to define "intelectual property" as property of the copyright holder. They could have very well decided to define information property as it is naturally defined, which is the property of the holder. Its theft in the sense that its been defined as "property", but its not necesarily unethical, legal and illegal does not always equal ethical and unethical, or moral and immoral. If someone is using software and finds it useful or makes money from it, that is unethical, if on the other hand someone doesnt like the software they try before they buy, or they are dirt poor and can not afford to buy it either way, then its not unethical (they wouldnt have paid for it in the first place).
In fact, in natural ownship of information, if I *have* information, and someone tells me to delete that information, or tells me not to share that information, can be unethical. For example if someone witnesses a crime or is molested and the criminal tells me not to share that information by force, then it becomes unethical for them to hold me back. That is why freedom of speech was created in the first place, to make it wrong to hold back information. The founding fathers in particular Thomas Jefferson, understood this and that is why he was hestitant in defining how information property would work, but he compromised at the promise of fair use rights and the time limit, which today is being trampled on left and right, and the time limit is extended by a lot more then our founding fathers wanted simply at the profits of a corporations like disney (they wanted more time to milk the cow, rape mickey and then let the public have him).
> Where does the money come from to PAY those programmers? From software sales. Reductions in those sales, because of theft of simply no one buying, means those programmers don't get paid.
If *no one* is buying the software, its because the software sucks face it, its more likely some people buy the software whether they use the warez version or not. This is why share ware and demos are done and still are done to this day, in order to allow people to try before they buy. The reason why a lot of companies opt out of shareware versions of their product these days is because users can download warez versions to try out before they buy, plus their user base may already be aware of their software and they dont need to promote it that much.
Another issue I have come across is that cracks which are created to remove protection from software, are used by legitimate users in order to get rid of anoying copy protection. I've done this on one occasion myself, because my cd rom drive was getting old and was producing a lot of heat, so I installed a full game and cracked it so it would not need the cd rom in the drive any more to play the game. Other people are annoyed and or dont trust dongles. But dongle software tends to be the more expensive kind of software and they are not interested in wasting resources persuing college kids trading their software on line, their main concern is studios who are making money off their license but not buying a lot of licenses. But cracks are a diffrent topic all together, although I dont recall if DOD was a cracking group or a warez group or both (I do recall seeing their name somewhere).
If you think the government protects us programmers you got to be kidding. What they did will probably scare some people, but it won't stop warez, or other copyright infringement. The reality of the matter is, the reason warez exists is because it is like speech, its as easy to transfer from one computer to another as it is for me to talk in someone elses ear. That is why it exists. Things like copy protection, and FBI raids, do little to stop piracy, it will reduce it here in the United States. And the primary target was ONE warez group, there are hundreds of them if not more smaller ones.
As a programmer, I look at this as laughable, and yet sad, because its a waste of tax money and resources, that could have been allocated to something more useful. The only reason I can see them doing this, is a demonstration that they are trying to do something and to scare people away from warez, but that certainly hasnt worked so far as I have seen in their past raids and even in the case of Napster and other file sharing programs, there wasnt a huge reduction after people heard about the raids.
Also, as I understand it, Alias Wavefront and other companies like them, dont care if some people download warez. There top priority is the studios who use their software to make money but are not spending that money on their licenses, as a matter of a fact they dont mind if someone learns how to use the software on a warez version because that is a larger user base, which means the studios who hire them will have workers experienced in their software. Because the studios are where a lot of their profit comes from. It doesnt come from some hackers/crackers trading files and kudos on the internet.
A lot of software developers, either have used or tried warez at one point or know someone who has. I've heard about some software developers having relationships with warez groups and even requesting them not to release the cracks right away. So this raid is not on behalf of all software developers.
Its definetly a waste of money and resources, but you know why this happened, its all to show off power. The FBI wants to show off that its doing something, the software associations like IDSA show off that they are doing something, so they can get more software developers to join. Its all end of the year, posturing. Aschroft has to scare away some of it.
> One of the definitions of arrogance is to downplay a truly genius application by saying it's "not a major leap".
In my opinion its not a major leap because it only enhances previous devices. And saying its not being a major leap does not downplay it in the least, it places it in perspective. It definetly is a great idea, because its very effecient, no special hardware or requirements, it takes a little and does a lot for a previous existing device, but that does not mean its a major leap. More inventive does not mean a major leap. Going to the moon is a major leap, creating a cure for cancer is a major leap, enhancing a device is not a major leap, despite it being genius.
> Has anybody thought to try and come up with a characterization of the typical Slashdotter?
Yeah, but they fall on their faces (jut like you), because slashdot is diverse and finding "the typical" is not an easy thing to do, not only that but the people who try to do this forget they are a slashdotter too.
> It seems more and more that there's more self-serving arrogance here than anywhere else.
And the previous poster was self-serving because?