If I had a new business model that would equal their current revenue streams I'd probably be out looking for venture capital right now.
Yeah, right. You'd do the same thing I would do if I had a such a business model: post it to Slashdot the next time we're all ranting about how stupid the music industry is.
Chances are anyone who would actually implement such a business model wouldn't advertise the fact that they don't have one!
Never believe anyone here who claims they aren't doing something because they don't have a better idea on how to do it--they've got a better idea just like you do, they're just too lazy to implement it, exactly like the rest of us.
But wouldn't recording the super resolution sound from your speakers be a waste? Some downgrade in signal will occur, and you wouldn't want to use lossy compression, because then why bother with high resolution?
This makes a lot of sense to me--except why have copy protection at all? No one's going to try to get the gigabyte sized lossless high resolution songfile from P2P networks--just sell the high resolution copy to audiophiles, use advertizing to brainwash everyone into thinking they're an audiophile and need the high resolution copy, bang, boom, money made, fair use rights retained, internet freedoms protected, everyone wins except the lawyers.
I'm not buying it. The CD drive isn't a critical piece of any computer (it doesn't need it to keep working), so why should it matter what happens inside the CD drive? And geez, CDs get scratched. I might make mistakes in burning them. Shit happens, damn it, whether or not your "standard" says it does or not. If PCs are more resiliant to broken CDs, then, YES that is a minor victory of PCs over Macs. Perhaps a very minor one, but a victory none the less. IT'S NOT APPLE'S FAULT YOU CAN'T PLAY IT, IT *IS* APPLE'S FAULT THAT IT BREAKS YOUR MAC.
That being said, I've tended to notice the opposite phenomenon. I've put in scratched data CDs that really annoyed the crap out of Windows 2000 (system slowing down, taking a long time to bring up an explorer window if it does at all) that my OS X iBook would read just fine.
There's a theory that the U.S. is committed to keeping Mideast oil flowing not so much for it's own consumption, but for that of Asia and Europe. So long as Asia and Europe get their oil, they don't need larger militaries, that could challenge our own.
I think I saw it at the atlantic, to lazy to look up link right now...
No, the rest of them will just steal whatever tricks Iceland spends money researching when it's convenient.
Alas, that was my plan, but those nosey kids and their geothermal, hydroelectric energy that won't work in other countries have spoiled my plans once again. But don't worry, the Neo United Nations of 2050 will just bomb them if they don't give us electric goodness.
The right-up said oil, but the actual article said ending fossil fuels entirely. And given the vast amounts of COAL we still have (enough that your grandchildren won't run out, assuming their willing to put up with unbreathable air and destroyed climates), it's actually a pretty significant goal.
Right, but to a consumer, it doesn't matter whether the OS is inherently "better" or more secure, what matters is the infection rate--how likely am I going to be infected. If going for the less popular brand means decreased probability of infection, even if it is just because it is the less popular brand, the security conscious consumer should still go with the less popular brand.
Yes, it does strike me as strange. But there's lots of even stranger things going on in our economy. The President asks us to purchase more to make our economy better. You might think it would be much HARDER to meet all of our needs in an economy if everyone is consuming more, but apparently this is not the case.
If we can accept that, than accepting the idea that doing what's best for everyone else won't be best for your bottom line doesn't surprise me very much at all. That's essentially the problem here--the community is best served by Free software, but your bottom line is not. It seems less a problem with Free software, and more a problem with capitalism itself no one's managed to figure out. But someone had better figure it out soon before we consume our environment into destruction...
I don't want to hear solutions based on using the software; the model here is someone who wants to be a programmer, not to remain an architect.
I believe in Free Software; I just can't see how I could ever be involved beyond it being a hobby funded by my real job.
Well, you have to get away from this model of making your own company to make money from free software. McVoy is right--that doesn't work. BUT there are other models of Free Software, many that have probably not been thought up yet.
The most obvious is that you keep your day job, and do your Free work as a hobbyist. That's not for everyone, but obviously a lot of people do it. You have a need to fulfill, you do so, you share your solution with everyone.
But there are lots of people who DO get to work full time on Free Software and get paid to do so. How? They work for companies that sell something OTHER than free software (Sun, IBM), that need a tool, and they build it for them, open sourcing it because they don't intend to sell it.
Which means you can't run your open source business out of your garage, except perhaps as some sort of contractor to larger companies. But on the other hand, no one's willing to trust their computer to software you wrote in your garage but won't let me see the source too.
The garage is for your hobby. I don't see that changing until we see some radical new social or technical development ( like a solution to the free-rider problem, or proof carrying code so I could trust binaries...)
Games should reward you for getting better, not for playing them more. It should be a function of skill and strategy, not of time spent. True, you're skill and strategy in a particular game will increase with time spent playing, but it should be a natural result of practice, not an arbitrary "experience points" system.
Most offline RPGs don't require you to waste time doing simple repetitive tasks before you get to do anything fun. Some do, and I generally don't play any of those games. Final Fantasy is fun immediately. Everquest and it's kind just want to taunt you with the fact that you are not and never will be able to even distract other players in combat, NOT because they are more skilled, NOT because they are smarter than you, but because they have a magic, game defined number that you can only get by playing ProgressQuest.
And yes, it does mean it is a bad game. The game encourages people to do mindless repetive tasks. People waste time doing these tasks, instead of doing something productive or creative, or even just playing a game that would improve their reflexes or intelligence instead. Thus, the world is an inferior place because of EverQuest, and that makes it a bad game.
But really, I only scream at companies making games like this out of love. I think massively multiplayer, persistent games have incredible potential. Yes, they will always have massive time commitments (will they always intentionally inflate their commitments with bizzarre relics from the gaming past as "experience points"?), but they have the potential to create entire societies purely for entertainment. MMOGs should be the genre of gaming showing the most innovation, so it hurts me so damn much to see them showing THE LEAST. Why is it we see nothing but endless improvements on a very antisocial game about killing monster after monster, selling what you find killing them, buying weapons, and killing more monsters?
So I'm really, really excited about any MM game coming down the pike that will show everyone, once and for all, that YES, IT'S POSSIBLE TO MAKE AN ONLINE GAME ABOUT MORE THAN KILLING LOTS OF STUFF TO GAIN LEVELS TO KILL MORE STUFF! Holy crap, it may even be possible to make a massively multiplayer online game where violence never happens!
And maybe, maybe, by appealing to a different demographic, these companies will learn that time commitments are a neccessary evil, not a feature.
Re:wonderful, *IF* you've got a Radeon or GF2...
on
Quartz Extreme Demo Movie
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Yeah, I was kind of ticked it wasn't going to work with my little iBook... in retrospect, it makes sense to expect that though. To store a texture big enough for my iBooks screen of size 1024 * 768 at 32bpp(4 bytes) takes 3 megs. Then consider overlapping windows (typically LOTS of those, at least the way I use computers) and other overhead... it all adds up, I suppose.
It was just a nasty surprise to read about how sexy cool Quartz Extreme would be until I'm drooling, then get all of those dreams dashed to pieces by brutal, brutal reality. Such is life.
Man, what I wouldn't give to have Zoom on my iBook. The resolution is just too darn high, I keep finding myself slouching to get a better look at the screen. Does zoom require Quartz Extreme hardware goodness? Given that the whole Quartz system is supposedly PDF based there would be no technical justification for that--I was kind of shocked when I discovered original 10.0 OS X didn't have a zooming feature--without zoom, what's the point of having everything in PDF?!
i didnt like paper mario when i rented it in a hotel once, it seemed really gay compared to the other games out on other systems at the time. mario rpg owns paper mario.
HOLY MOLY!!!!! GAY?!!!! WHATEVER PAPER MARIO IS WAY BETTAR!!!!!
I'll hold up Super Smash Brothers and Super Monkey Ball to any Nintendo or SNES game for fun, playability, or content. I'll agree that the 8/16 bit era of gaming was a golden age, but when I play some the Gamecube launch titles and look at Mario, Metroid, and especially Zelda screenshots, heck even some of my Dreamcast games, I start to suspect we might be starting a new golden age--that developers are finally starting to understand the medium of gameplay inside a 3d projections onto 2d surface.
Mario RPG was good, but if you liked it, you've GOT to play Paper Mario on N64.
The brilliant thing about Paper Mario was how much depth the game had relative to how complicated it was--there was more strategy in defeating a monster than in any post-VI Final Fantasy game, yet the game was so much simpler. Actually, there was a whole lot of brilliant things about Paper Mario--much better than Mario RPG.
Here is his (and your) illogic. He thought I was using a different definition of freedom, judging from his post. He listed his definition of freedom, yet his definition of freedom indicated fit the scenario I had ALREADY described.
My example is the one that fits this case we are discussing--aka closed firmware and open source operating systems. I didn't contrive it--it's the example in the article that you should have read before posting here.
My objection is that I want to run BOTH closed source and open source, and that THAT is the way to maximize the amount of freedom (as in free software) in users hands. Stallman and you are the ones presenting a false dilemma, not I.
I always found that I could pop open the sims for 'just 10 minutes' (which invariably becomes 30...) but I will sit down for a good chunk with an RPG (to date I think most of my playstation RPG sessions were at least 30 minutes, if not more like 1hr +...) Without adding a new 'competitive' aspect to The Sims, or building a structured points/leveling/neighboorhood/my_sims_need_therapy system, I find it difficult to imagine that they will find the online version will get the same rabid response from the gaming community that drove the original single-player 'The Sims' to blockbuster status on the PC.
I dunno, it seems to me that the very things you describe are what keeps me from playing any current MMOGs. I was totally put off by the having to put hours of time in at a time, social hierarchy based totally on how little life you have outside the game, statistics systems designed to waste my time and addict me rather than be rewarding play in and of themselves.
I think the lack of any clear goal, except a focus on doing whatever you think is fun, and it's focus on inherently social situations, makes it an exceptional candidate for turning into an online game. Indeed, the prospect of everyone showing off their own version of the pretty house to each other strikes me as an incredibly beautiful idea for a game.
Remember, if it's sold on a montly subscription model, it doesn't matter how many hours you want to waste on it--it just matters that you're willing to pay to waste SOME time on it every month.
I never bothered to get into the Sims, simply because everyone else already was, and I have a bigoted disdain for things everyone else likes already;). But perhaps an online version would be different enough from all other massively multiplayer games that I'd have to give it a shot.
But, a trend I've noticed, if only because I myself am horribly guilty of it, is that the bulk of the Linux crowd values freedom only so long as it doesn't as it doesn't inconvenience them and as long as it doesn't go outside their own world view, regardless of code usage or any other factor.
I'm curious what you mean by "go outside their own world view." The phrase could mean anything, one could even say Stallman only supports freedom within his own FSF worldview.
Besides that, I'm curious about the difference between convenience and freedom. Convenience gives me the ability to do what I otherwise couldn't do, Freedom gives me the ability to do what I otherwise wouldn't be allowed to. The point of maxmizing my Freedom is maximizing what my ability to do stuff--NOT the other way around! At least, not to me. You can't accuse me of ignoring my priorities--I simply think that you've gotten yours backwards.
This is not freedom. This is anarchy.
Why do we throw statements around like this (I do it too.) Neither the word "freedom" and especially not "anarchy" are anywhere near well defined enough for this statement to have any meaning whatsoever.
I wasn't even quite sure if you could do that or not. In any event, I would be very surprised to discover that most The Sims users are doing this, although it sounds very cool and like something that some people could be come very obsessed over. But even if EA had been fascist jerks about this stuff and prohibited it, my suspicion is that The Sims would still be successful, probably just as successful as now.
His comment seemed like an attempt to take something with an appeal he didn't find quite so engaging (raise the virtual family), and try to claim its appeal was something else (customization), which is dangerous, as there are quite a few games as or more customizable than The Sims that were neither the creative nor commercial success that The Sims is.
He's worried about the camel's-nose-in-the-tent effect; the creeping introduction of nonfree s/w until at some future time, something critical becomes nonfree and suddenly the fact that 98% of the s/w is free doesn't matter anymore - without that critical 2%, the system doesn't run. Sure, we're all in good shape with the present Linux setup - but what about later? That's where RMS is looking.
That is a valid concern, but wouldn't it work both ways? For example, if I start running all open source apps under windows, later I can switch to Hurd with little impact on my convenience but great improvement on my freedom.
Why are you admiting your comment is uninformed? When it's perfectly well informed, it's merely illogical.
Let me repeat myself. Imagine two scenarios, one in which my OS and applications have ALL FOUR OF THE FREEDOMS YOU JUST DESCRIBED, except for a firmware module to load into hardware. The other in which NONE OF MY SOFTWARE HAS ANY OF THE FREEDOMS YOU DESCRIBE, because I won't be able to use the required firmware.
Slashdot Mirror
Computers that do not crash and require expensive repairs in response to bad CDs were better programmed (for this particular crisis).
Computers that do not crash and require expensive repairs in response to bad CDs chose better manufactuers for their CD-ROM drives.
Yeah, right. You'd do the same thing I would do if I had a such a business model: post it to Slashdot the next time we're all ranting about how stupid the music industry is.
Chances are anyone who would actually implement such a business model wouldn't advertise the fact that they don't have one!
Never believe anyone here who claims they aren't doing something because they don't have a better idea on how to do it--they've got a better idea just like you do, they're just too lazy to implement it, exactly like the rest of us.
Yeah, I no what you mean. How do ewe think eye started to right like this in the first place?
This makes a lot of sense to me--except why have copy protection at all? No one's going to try to get the gigabyte sized lossless high resolution songfile from P2P networks--just sell the high resolution copy to audiophiles, use advertizing to brainwash everyone into thinking they're an audiophile and need the high resolution copy, bang, boom, money made, fair use rights retained, internet freedoms protected, everyone wins except the lawyers.
That being said, I've tended to notice the opposite phenomenon. I've put in scratched data CDs that really annoyed the crap out of Windows 2000 (system slowing down, taking a long time to bring up an explorer window if it does at all) that my OS X iBook would read just fine.
There's a theory that the U.S. is committed to keeping Mideast oil flowing not so much for it's own consumption, but for that of Asia and Europe. So long as Asia and Europe get their oil, they don't need larger militaries, that could challenge our own. I think I saw it at the atlantic, to lazy to look up link right now...
Alas, that was my plan, but those nosey kids and their geothermal, hydroelectric energy that won't work in other countries have spoiled my plans once again. But don't worry, the Neo United Nations of 2050 will just bomb them if they don't give us electric goodness.
Whoops, I meant the write-up, obviously.
The right-up said oil, but the actual article said ending fossil fuels entirely. And given the vast amounts of COAL we still have (enough that your grandchildren won't run out, assuming their willing to put up with unbreathable air and destroyed climates), it's actually a pretty significant goal.
Right, but to a consumer, it doesn't matter whether the OS is inherently "better" or more secure, what matters is the infection rate--how likely am I going to be infected. If going for the less popular brand means decreased probability of infection, even if it is just because it is the less popular brand, the security conscious consumer should still go with the less popular brand.
If we can accept that, than accepting the idea that doing what's best for everyone else won't be best for your bottom line doesn't surprise me very much at all. That's essentially the problem here--the community is best served by Free software, but your bottom line is not. It seems less a problem with Free software, and more a problem with capitalism itself no one's managed to figure out. But someone had better figure it out soon before we consume our environment into destruction...
I believe in Free Software; I just can't see how I could ever be involved beyond it being a hobby funded by my real job.
Well, you have to get away from this model of making your own company to make money from free software. McVoy is right--that doesn't work. BUT there are other models of Free Software, many that have probably not been thought up yet.
The most obvious is that you keep your day job, and do your Free work as a hobbyist. That's not for everyone, but obviously a lot of people do it. You have a need to fulfill, you do so, you share your solution with everyone.
But there are lots of people who DO get to work full time on Free Software and get paid to do so. How? They work for companies that sell something OTHER than free software (Sun, IBM), that need a tool, and they build it for them, open sourcing it because they don't intend to sell it.
Which means you can't run your open source business out of your garage, except perhaps as some sort of contractor to larger companies. But on the other hand, no one's willing to trust their computer to software you wrote in your garage but won't let me see the source too.
The garage is for your hobby. I don't see that changing until we see some radical new social or technical development ( like a solution to the free-rider problem, or proof carrying code so I could trust binaries...)
Most offline RPGs don't require you to waste time doing simple repetitive tasks before you get to do anything fun. Some do, and I generally don't play any of those games. Final Fantasy is fun immediately. Everquest and it's kind just want to taunt you with the fact that you are not and never will be able to even distract other players in combat, NOT because they are more skilled, NOT because they are smarter than you, but because they have a magic, game defined number that you can only get by playing ProgressQuest.
And yes, it does mean it is a bad game. The game encourages people to do mindless repetive tasks. People waste time doing these tasks, instead of doing something productive or creative, or even just playing a game that would improve their reflexes or intelligence instead. Thus, the world is an inferior place because of EverQuest, and that makes it a bad game.
But really, I only scream at companies making games like this out of love. I think massively multiplayer, persistent games have incredible potential. Yes, they will always have massive time commitments (will they always intentionally inflate their commitments with bizzarre relics from the gaming past as "experience points"?), but they have the potential to create entire societies purely for entertainment. MMOGs should be the genre of gaming showing the most innovation, so it hurts me so damn much to see them showing THE LEAST. Why is it we see nothing but endless improvements on a very antisocial game about killing monster after monster, selling what you find killing them, buying weapons, and killing more monsters?
So I'm really, really excited about any MM game coming down the pike that will show everyone, once and for all, that YES, IT'S POSSIBLE TO MAKE AN ONLINE GAME ABOUT MORE THAN KILLING LOTS OF STUFF TO GAIN LEVELS TO KILL MORE STUFF! Holy crap, it may even be possible to make a massively multiplayer online game where violence never happens!
And maybe, maybe, by appealing to a different demographic, these companies will learn that time commitments are a neccessary evil, not a feature.
It was just a nasty surprise to read about how sexy cool Quartz Extreme would be until I'm drooling, then get all of those dreams dashed to pieces by brutal, brutal reality. Such is life.
Man, what I wouldn't give to have Zoom on my iBook. The resolution is just too darn high, I keep finding myself slouching to get a better look at the screen. Does zoom require Quartz Extreme hardware goodness? Given that the whole Quartz system is supposedly PDF based there would be no technical justification for that--I was kind of shocked when I discovered original 10.0 OS X didn't have a zooming feature--without zoom, what's the point of having everything in PDF?!
HOLY MOLY!!!!! GAY?!!!! WHATEVER PAPER MARIO IS WAY BETTAR!!!!!
I AM TOTALLY PUNCHING U!!!!! TAKE THAT!!!!
BYE!!!!!
I'll hold up Super Smash Brothers and Super Monkey Ball to any Nintendo or SNES game for fun, playability, or content. I'll agree that the 8/16 bit era of gaming was a golden age, but when I play some the Gamecube launch titles and look at Mario, Metroid, and especially Zelda screenshots, heck even some of my Dreamcast games, I start to suspect we might be starting a new golden age--that developers are finally starting to understand the medium of gameplay inside a 3d projections onto 2d surface.
Super Smash Brothers Melee is basically a 2d game, gameplay wise...
The brilliant thing about Paper Mario was how much depth the game had relative to how complicated it was--there was more strategy in defeating a monster than in any post-VI Final Fantasy game, yet the game was so much simpler. Actually, there was a whole lot of brilliant things about Paper Mario--much better than Mario RPG.
My example is the one that fits this case we are discussing--aka closed firmware and open source operating systems. I didn't contrive it--it's the example in the article that you should have read before posting here.
My objection is that I want to run BOTH closed source and open source, and that THAT is the way to maximize the amount of freedom (as in free software) in users hands. Stallman and you are the ones presenting a false dilemma, not I.
I dunno, it seems to me that the very things you describe are what keeps me from playing any current MMOGs. I was totally put off by the having to put hours of time in at a time, social hierarchy based totally on how little life you have outside the game, statistics systems designed to waste my time and addict me rather than be rewarding play in and of themselves.
I think the lack of any clear goal, except a focus on doing whatever you think is fun, and it's focus on inherently social situations, makes it an exceptional candidate for turning into an online game. Indeed, the prospect of everyone showing off their own version of the pretty house to each other strikes me as an incredibly beautiful idea for a game.
Remember, if it's sold on a montly subscription model, it doesn't matter how many hours you want to waste on it--it just matters that you're willing to pay to waste SOME time on it every month.
I never bothered to get into the Sims, simply because everyone else already was, and I have a bigoted disdain for things everyone else likes already ;). But perhaps an online version would be different enough from all other massively multiplayer games that I'd have to give it a shot.
I'm curious what you mean by "go outside their own world view." The phrase could mean anything, one could even say Stallman only supports freedom within his own FSF worldview.
Besides that, I'm curious about the difference between convenience and freedom. Convenience gives me the ability to do what I otherwise couldn't do, Freedom gives me the ability to do what I otherwise wouldn't be allowed to. The point of maxmizing my Freedom is maximizing what my ability to do stuff--NOT the other way around! At least, not to me. You can't accuse me of ignoring my priorities--I simply think that you've gotten yours backwards.
This is not freedom. This is anarchy.
Why do we throw statements around like this (I do it too.) Neither the word "freedom" and especially not "anarchy" are anywhere near well defined enough for this statement to have any meaning whatsoever.
His comment seemed like an attempt to take something with an appeal he didn't find quite so engaging (raise the virtual family), and try to claim its appeal was something else (customization), which is dangerous, as there are quite a few games as or more customizable than The Sims that were neither the creative nor commercial success that The Sims is.
That is a valid concern, but wouldn't it work both ways? For example, if I start running all open source apps under windows, later I can switch to Hurd with little impact on my convenience but great improvement on my freedom.
Let me repeat myself. Imagine two scenarios, one in which my OS and applications have ALL FOUR OF THE FREEDOMS YOU JUST DESCRIBED, except for a firmware module to load into hardware. The other in which NONE OF MY SOFTWARE HAS ANY OF THE FREEDOMS YOU DESCRIBE, because I won't be able to use the required firmware.
Scenario 1 has more Freedom than scenario 2.