Very true. If it goes out on coax/S-Video/etc, it's already ready to be copied -- even by a
computer.
Well, in fact even if it's a strong crypto
from tape to screen
I still can use a camcorder,
like I can use a microphone to record sound.
"Copy-protecting" anything I can see or hear is itself impossible.
We have a new "copy-protection" (the term itself is misleading, it suggest that making copies is something evil in the first place)
every month or so.
It reminds me the situation with the new compression algorithms we have every few months.
When will they learn?
I mean, they should be the experts, right?
I replied to a
0 score AC post
so for those who don't read replies to posts
below their threshold,
here's my comment.
I posted more important info and quite a few good links there. Enjoy.
Mod me however you feel like.
The truth is that I usually read at +1 so I don't see AC posts until they're modded up.
But that's not important.
The important thing is that I really like the
The WorldForge Project
(in fact, it's one of my favourite projects
(if not the favourite project),
promoting the idea of free software to broader audience.
They're doing amazing work and I simply can't
imagine what will they achieve in few years,
but I'm sure all of current proprietary games
won't even compare with those developed as a part
of
The WorldForge Project
So yes, I think promoring
WorldForge
is worth losing all of my karma.
Now back on topic...
You may want to announce your plans on the
cpptraining at worldforge.org mailing list. It's originally meant to learn C++,
not C#, but it's read by people who want to
learn how to write MMORPGs, and those who want to and really can learn, like Bryce Harrington, so it's a good place
to find people who can help with your project.
The Linux kernel contains
4,141,432 lines of code. Reading the entire kernel will take an
estimated 14253.43 hours, or 593.89 days.
After 593.89 days it's going to be quite out of date...
Will they also read patches while they arrive?
I think Loki did a great job after all.
on
A Loki Timeline
·
· Score: 1
Loki proved that Linux really is a great platform for games. The only problems were strictly social and economical, not technical. I know many people who radically changed their opinions about Linux being a poor desktop and gaming platform, after seeing
Soldier of Fortune
or SimCity 3000 Unlimited.
So yes, they proved that Linux is not only a toy OS for hackers. And this means a lot.
Loki has made Linux better, from technical point of view. We have
SDL and OpenAL.
We have a great book
Programming Linux Games by Loki Software and John R. Hall.
For all of these Loki deserves big thanks from all of us. We also owe them apology for not supporting them as we should. It's sad, but their economical failure is mostly our fault. We have to understand that.
Linux community is a pretty strange market. We're used to free speech and free beer. So I guess now we have to wait for WorldForge.
Your concerns are very important,
and in fact they are
the main problems, which the GFDL is created
to solve.
Let me quote few fragments of the
GFDL, from section 4. Modifications, the emphasis is mine:
4. MODIFICATIONS
You may copy and distribute a Modified Version
[...]
provided that you release
the Modified Version under precisely this License [...].
In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:
A. Use in the Title Page
(and on the covers, if any)
a title distinct
from that of the Document,
and from those of previous versions
(which should, if there were any, be listed in the History section of the Document).
You may use the same title as a previous version
if the original publisher of that version gives permission.
B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities
responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified
Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the
Document (all of its principal authors, if it has less than five).
[...]
I.
Preserve the section entitled "History", and its title, and add to
it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and
publisher [...].
If
there is no section entitled "History" in the Document, create one
[...], then add an item describing the Modified
Version [...].
[...]
K. In any section entitled "Acknowledgements" or "Dedications",
preserve the section's title, and preserve in the section all the
substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements
and/or dedications given therein.
[...]
The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License
give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or
imply endorsement of any Modified Version.
This are only fragments,
which are, in my opinion,
the most imoprtant for your concerns.
For more details, read the whole
section 4. Modifications of the
GNU Free Documentation License.
As far as other types of writing goes, though, I personally would
not want someone else to have the right to take what I said and distort those words to
their own use.
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document "free" in the
sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without
modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the
author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for
modifications made by others.
Re:The pay-for-play concept works
on
Pay to Play
·
· Score: 1
Until you can pick up one of these games for a few hours a month, or play them on an
odd schedule and still do well, I don't think the market for them will grow much.
Good point.
The WorldForge Project,
which I'm going to advertise once again:),
is planning to make games where will be e.g. twelve games on one server, every game played for two hours a day. That way most of the people can play, not only kids with to much free time.
Unfortunately I can't find it now (and I've been searching for almost an hour, there are tons of text), but it has to be somewhere on the
new WWW,
old WWW,
or posted on one of the
mailing lists.
Another interesting idea is scripting, i.e. you'll be able to program your character (writing your own scripts, using one of standard scripts, or using a GUI script builder, etc.) to e.g.
always work and eat and practice riding a horse every day, even when you don't have time to play.
That way PCs can act like custom NPCs when the player is away.
If you want to know more, read
Getting Started in Worldforge,
it's a great place to start and it's also very
interesting to read.
Somehow, it is quite hard to _really_ initiate a secure communication without much
work.
I won't say anything insightful here,
but when I need a Secure Internet Live Conferencing(tm) to safely talk about some top secret stuff with people I work with,
then we just connect to our server with
ssh,
run
BitchX
and use a local
IRC daemon.
Quite easy and secure for me,
especially when
most of the work is in shell anyway.
Re:The pay-for-play concept works
on
Pay to Play
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
May only be a niche market, but pay-for-play is definitely a viable model.
Maybe now it's a niche, but probably because not
so many people have DSL in their home.
MMORPGs are IMO much more interresting than any other games, and I think they'll be more popular when Internet connections are cheaper.
In fact, I think we'll see many games in the future which will be based on engines and media provided by projects like e.g. WorldForge
but with customized worlds, where we'll have to
pay for playing, to pay for servers and huge bandwidth.
I can read, understand and write x86 assembler, but I am not skilled enought to
understand gcc source.
That's enough to be helpful. You can just post to
gcc@gcc.gnu.org
what you were compiling, what assembly you got, and how would you improve the assembly output.
Really, that way you and everyone else could benefit.
The main competitor of Intel
are x86 clones, not PPC.
If their optimization improves performance on
non-intel x86 chips, than their own compiler
already has to do it.
That's why I assume, that their optimization
is very specific to their own chips, and to almost nothing else (especialy AMD chips).
Sometime I analize assembler code produced by gcc-2.95.3 and I am dissapointed. Gcc
can do so stupid things like inserting instruction inside - instead outside of loop.
Instead of being dissapointed, you should talk about it on
GCC mailing lists
or even submit a patch.
This is how
GCC
evolve.
If you are skilled enough (and I suppose you are, if you can read and understand optimized assembly),
and if you suffer because of low performence,
than you should act instead of just being dissapointed.
Remember that GCC
is a
free software, you can improve it.
I am, however, surprised with one thing:
Why doesn't Intel try to improve the GCC itself?
They sell hardware, after all, and it would really benefit them, when they could say "Our 1GHz CPU is 40% faster than AMD 1GHz CPU using the standard GCC compiler." Intel should want every compiler on Earth to use their optimization (so should AMD and others), not only their compiler.
Loki proved that Linux really is a great platform for games. The only problems were strictly social and economical, not technical. I know many people who radically changed their opinions about Linux being a poor desktop and gaming platform, after seeing
Soldier of Fortune
or SimCity 3000 Unlimited.
So yes, they proved that Linux is not only a toy OS for hackers. And this means a lot.
Loki has made Linux better, from technical point of view. We have
SDL and OpenAL.
We have a great book
Programming Linux Games by Loki Software and John R. Hall.
For all of these Loki deserves big thanks from all of us. We also owe them apology for not supporting them as we should. It's sad, but their economical failure is mostly our fault. We have to understand that.
Linux community is a pretty strange market. We're used to free speech and free beer. So I guess now we have to wait for WorldForge.
I'm not holding my breath for any commercial games for Linux anytime soon...
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document "free" in the
sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without
modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the
author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for
modifications made by others.
But I think we should talk about much more important issue, i.e. how to print a book with such free license. I suppose most of publishers are used to intellectual property
and would rather choose some traditional, more restrictive license than the FDL.
So here's my question:
No matter what free license we choose,
where should we look for publishers, who will want to print our books?
FreeBSD ports and Sorcerer
on
Debian NetBSD
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
So it's basically the same thing which
Sorcerer
wants to achieve, right?
Than maybe Sorcerer
should just use FreeBSD ports instead of reinventing the wheel?
What are the price/performance ratios for virtual machines? Is it cheaper to run 10 VM's on one 10 times faster machine than just 10 slower machines? Because the VM idea is exactly the opposite of Beowulf cluster, and it doesn't look very cost-effective.
Slashdot Mirror
Just use your tv as a filter, if it has a video output.
Maybe I don't get something here?
When will they learn? I mean, they should be the experts, right?
I replied to a 0 score AC post so for those who don't read replies to posts below their threshold, here's my comment . I posted more important info and quite a few good links there. Enjoy.
The important thing is that I really like the The WorldForge Project (in fact, it's one of my favourite projects (if not the favourite project), promoting the idea of free software to broader audience.
They're doing amazing work and I simply can't imagine what will they achieve in few years, but I'm sure all of current proprietary games won't even compare with those developed as a part of The WorldForge Project
So yes, I think promoring WorldForge is worth losing all of my karma.
Now back on topic...
You may want to announce your plans on the cpptraining at worldforge.org mailing list. It's originally meant to learn C++, not C#, but it's read by people who want to learn how to write MMORPGs, and those who want to and really can learn, like Bryce Harrington, so it's a good place to find people who can help with your project.
Also check out the other WorldForge mailing lists, especially Protocols, Server, Client and General.
Read the Development Area on WWW. Read about servers and clients. Use WorldForge protocols and libraries. Download games and read the source. You'll find there everything you need.
Take a look at The WorldForge Project. You probably won't learn more anywhere else.
But it was in a machine readable form, so a little bit more advanced technology...
Will they also read patches while they arrive?
So yes, they proved that Linux is not only a toy OS for hackers. And this means a lot.
Loki has made Linux better, from technical point of view. We have SDL and OpenAL. We have a great book Programming Linux Games by Loki Software and John R. Hall. For all of these Loki deserves big thanks from all of us. We also owe them apology for not supporting them as we should. It's sad, but their economical failure is mostly our fault. We have to understand that.
Linux community is a pretty strange market. We're used to free speech and free beer. So I guess now we have to wait for WorldForge.
Your concerns are very important, and in fact they are the main problems, which the GFDL is created to solve. Let me quote few fragments of the GFDL, from section 4. Modifications, the emphasis is mine: This are only fragments, which are, in my opinion, the most imoprtant for your concerns. For more details, read the whole section 4. Modifications of the GNU Free Documentation License.
The GNU Free Documentation License, first paragraph of preamble, emphasis is mine:
The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other written document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.
Unfortunately I can't find it now (and I've been searching for almost an hour, there are tons of text), but it has to be somewhere on the new WWW, old WWW, or posted on one of the mailing lists.
Another interesting idea is scripting, i.e. you'll be able to program your character (writing your own scripts, using one of standard scripts, or using a GUI script builder, etc.) to e.g. always work and eat and practice riding a horse every day, even when you don't have time to play. That way PCs can act like custom NPCs when the player is away.
If you want to know more, read Getting Started in Worldforge , it's a great place to start and it's also very interesting to read.
Really, that way you and everyone else could benefit.
That's why I assume, that their optimization is very specific to their own chips, and to almost nothing else (especialy AMD chips).
I am, however, surprised with one thing: Why doesn't Intel try to improve the GCC itself? They sell hardware, after all, and it would really benefit them, when they could say "Our 1GHz CPU is 40% faster than AMD 1GHz CPU using the standard GCC compiler." Intel should want every compiler on Earth to use their optimization (so should AMD and others), not only their compiler.
So yes, they proved that Linux is not only a toy OS for hackers. And this means a lot.
Loki has made Linux better, from technical point of view. We have SDL and OpenAL. We have a great book Programming Linux Games by Loki Software and John R. Hall. For all of these Loki deserves big thanks from all of us. We also owe them apology for not supporting them as we should. It's sad, but their economical failure is mostly our fault. We have to understand that.
Linux community is a pretty strange market. We're used to free speech and free beer. So I guess now we have to wait for WorldForge. I'm not holding my breath for any commercial games for Linux anytime soon...
My personal recommendation would be The GNU Free Documentation License:
But I think we should talk about much more important issue, i.e. how to print a book with such free license. I suppose most of publishers are used to intellectual property and would rather choose some traditional, more restrictive license than the FDL.So here's my question: No matter what free license we choose, where should we look for publishers, who will want to print our books?
So it's basically the same thing which Sorcerer wants to achieve, right? Than maybe Sorcerer should just use FreeBSD ports instead of reinventing the wheel?
What are the price/performance ratios for virtual machines? Is it cheaper to run 10 VM's on one 10 times faster machine than just 10 slower machines? Because the VM idea is exactly the opposite of Beowulf cluster, and it doesn't look very cost-effective.