Access to computers should be unlimited and total.
I always thought that was something of a dychotomy. On one side, the hacker mindset is that all computer systems should be wide open. On the other hand, the hacker mistrusts organizations and governments.
Hackers do believe in full freedom of information--the government has the same right as everyone else. The problem is when government is the only one to be able to view the information.
Also, there's a difference between information that should remain personal, and that which should be public. All have differing views on this, so I'll give mine.
The amount of money in my account, my sexual preferences, my phone number, a letter to my girlfriend, and my e-mail address is my private information. I have the right to choose who knows, and who is allowed to disclose those pieces of information.
Now other pieces of information like how much a publically traded company makes, how the government spends money, etc should be public made available to those to whom the government/company is responsible to.
Processes on the other hand should almost always be made public. These include how the bank secures my money, how the government takes census, how UCLA decides who goes in the dorm, and who gets booted, etc. And if any of those things aren't made public, it is perfectly ok to determine them through reverse engineering and hacking. For one thing, I don't want my bank using a cruddy method of protecting my money that any two-bit cracker can break through. Therefore, I shall try and break through. If I can, I tell them how I did it. (now, in reality I am neither skilled enough to do this, nor willing to risk jail time. However, I don't think this should be jaileable offense)
I think this ties in to the elitist approach to hacker standing: a hacker proves its worth by his hacks. The point being, if you have to use technical skill and cracking knowledge to get into a system, you can. If all that is being used is political weight to finance an intrusion campaign, then it's wrong, because no effort is spent on actually penetrating the system.
And so, the hacker maxim has to be revised: I think it should read, the level of information you are allowed to get is proportional to the skill you display.
There's a difference between healthy competition and ranking, and elitism. We rank the quality of teachers, actors, politicians, employers, etc... Why not rank the quality of hackers?
Now elitism is a danger. There are various things that may usually correlate with someone who is not a hacker, but are not direct indicators. Examples include people with poor spelling and grammer, people with @aol.com addresses, people who like MS stuff, etc... However, I have found that while those (and I've fit in the @aol.com address thing before) people tend to get flamed, there are always people willing to help and nurture them. And if they are humble, good, and able to demonstrate that they can hack, then I have found that there usually is acceptance.
The other issue you brought up was the idea that the level of info you have access to is in proportion to your skill. I don't believe this (though there are certainly many in the hacker/script-kiddies community who try to enforce this). When a hacker frees information, it is for everyone's benefit (there was plenty of universally available information on building [pick your color] boxes.) Now maybe the respect you're given depends on your skill, but no matter what your skill, the information should be available to you.
I actually think the argument was really well-written and made a lot of sense. The bad points you mentioned, I believe are actually good points.
1) He complains about the poor quality, then complains the file size is too large. Bad bad.
He's not saying that anything is currently better. He complained about the size because of download times (which is an issue), and the quality for obvious reasons. Both of those are valid points. It can be solved by better algorythms, or more bandwidth (both of which he listed as solutions).
2) Tries to separate a file format from an application.
How is that a bad point? I thought that was one of the better points of the article. The application is high-quality, portable audio which can be arranged as desired (as opposed to cd's which are arranged by the producer, not the user). The user doesn't care about file formats. The user cares about the application. If there was something equivalent or better to mp3 called "foobar", then I wouldn't care that it was called foobar... that was his point.
Now, he did imply that the mp3 file format was not really better (or not really much better) than cd, which would not be good enough for it to replace cds. The argument is good, but the premise is wrong. He was judging based solely on quality. The main advantage to mp3s aren't their quality, but their arrangeability and size (physical). It is now possible to fit many clips from several artists, arranged in whatever play order is desired, all stored in something about the size of a cd+player. That is why mp3s are cool.
But, as he was trying to emphasize, it's not the format, but the use that's important.
I see so many positive comments about the game, but from the screenshots I saw, this game will be crud. It looks like a bunch of textured spheres and some dumb patterns for the wall. The story line was about standard for action games, but the engine itself looked awful.
Also, did you notice that the same guy who did the graphics for the game did them for the site? The graphics on the site were generated by script-fu's that come bundled with the Gimp. In my opinion, that shows a distinct lack of creativity; besides I always thought that the super-nova thing looked ugly.
Anyways, I'm not buying a game that looks so awful, even if it has Linux support. We should not buy games just because they're made for Linux; why should we be any less demanding than the Windows game world? Linux stands for quality, not "I'll use it because it's Free no matter how much it sucks." (and yes, I know that this game isn't Free) --Eric Guenterberg
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target"
Slashdot Mirror
Also, there's a difference between information that should remain personal, and that which should be public. All have differing views on this, so I'll give mine.
The amount of money in my account, my sexual preferences, my phone number, a letter to my girlfriend, and my e-mail address is my private information. I have the right to choose who knows, and who is allowed to disclose those pieces of information.
Now other pieces of information like how much a publically traded company makes, how the government spends money, etc should be public made available to those to whom the government/company is responsible to.
Processes on the other hand should almost always be made public. These include how the bank secures my money, how the government takes census, how UCLA decides who goes in the dorm, and who gets booted, etc. And if any of those things aren't made public, it is perfectly ok to determine them through reverse engineering and hacking. For one thing, I don't want my bank using a cruddy method of protecting my money that any two-bit cracker can break through. Therefore, I shall try and break through. If I can, I tell them how I did it. (now, in reality I am neither skilled enough to do this, nor willing to risk jail time. However, I don't think this should be jaileable offense)
There's a difference between healthy competition and ranking, and elitism. We rank the quality of teachers, actors, politicians, employers, etc... Why not rank the quality of hackers?Now elitism is a danger. There are various things that may usually correlate with someone who is not a hacker, but are not direct indicators. Examples include people with poor spelling and grammer, people with @aol.com addresses, people who like MS stuff, etc... However, I have found that while those (and I've fit in the @aol.com address thing before) people tend to get flamed, there are always people willing to help and nurture them. And if they are humble, good, and able to demonstrate that they can hack, then I have found that there usually is acceptance.
The other issue you brought up was the idea that the level of info you have access to is in proportion to your skill. I don't believe this (though there are certainly many in the hacker/script-kiddies community who try to enforce this). When a hacker frees information, it is for everyone's benefit (there was plenty of universally available information on building [pick your color] boxes.) Now maybe the respect you're given depends on your skill, but no matter what your skill, the information should be available to you.
Well, I've ranted long enough, time to go....
These are both far superior to Win95. So is BeOS for that matter. And I've heard (but not verified) that Amiga is better.
1) He complains about the poor quality, then complains the file size is too large. Bad bad.
He's not saying that anything is currently better. He complained about the size because of download times (which is an issue), and the quality for obvious reasons. Both of those are valid points. It can be solved by better algorythms, or more bandwidth (both of which he listed as solutions).
2) Tries to separate a file format from an application.
How is that a bad point? I thought that was one of the better points of the article. The application is high-quality, portable audio which can be arranged as desired (as opposed to cd's which are arranged by the producer, not the user). The user doesn't care about file formats. The user cares about the application. If there was something equivalent or better to mp3 called "foobar", then I wouldn't care that it was called foobar... that was his point.
Now, he did imply that the mp3 file format was not really better (or not really much better) than cd, which would not be good enough for it to replace cds. The argument is good, but the premise is wrong. He was judging based solely on quality. The main advantage to mp3s aren't their quality, but their arrangeability and size (physical). It is now possible to fit many clips from several artists, arranged in whatever play order is desired, all stored in something about the size of a cd+player. That is why mp3s are cool.
But, as he was trying to emphasize, it's not the format, but the use that's important.
On the other hand, the open content license could apply to the material on this site, but I seriously doubt that Gore would want to do that.
:-)
--Eric Guenterberg
Also, did you notice that the same guy who did the graphics for the game did them for the site? The graphics on the site were generated by script-fu's that come bundled with the Gimp. In my opinion, that shows a distinct lack of creativity; besides I always thought that the super-nova thing looked ugly.
Anyways, I'm not buying a game that looks so awful, even if it has Linux support. We should not buy games just because they're made for Linux; why should we be any less demanding than the Windows game world? Linux stands for quality, not "I'll use it because it's Free no matter how much it sucks." (and yes, I know that this game isn't Free)
--Eric Guenterberg