I know a lot of people are pretty angry about outsourcing. As an programmer in a western country I realise that my days of code cutting may soon be behind me. There are really two scenarios here:
Either Indian companies really can provide coding and IT services of the same quality as an australian team, or they can't.
If they can't, then this process will come to an end and I can make a good living writing code. On the other hand, I might be forced to think about doing something new. How about home automation? No one is in as good a position to help people sort out the bewildering array of hardware, software and interior design as someone who actually lives in my town.
I can imagine as home automation becomes more hackable, more and more people will want to make software modifications. If it's a quick hack, I can do it myself, if not I can call my team in india to put together a high quality mod for my customer's climate control/music system/garden fertilising system. I can provide a highly technical and productive service based on my local presence and feed my family too.
Comming back down to earth, I wonder whether outsourcing companies can truely provide the quality we need. Frankly, when I think about it, I hope they can. Cutting code just isn't as cool as hacking someone's house.
Well, realistically you wouldn't be able to skip anything, since one is hard pressed today to find broadcasts that don't include product placement or cross promotion.
"not to be rude or anything, but WF makes Mozilla look like linux - development is just plain glacial."
Yep, glacial is about right. I don't think anyone knew how long it would take to get a working game out, even one as simple as Acorn. At least now we have a core team that actually has experience in getting a game out there. I think that will be the key to our success from now onward.
Well we've got CVS, IRC, mailing lists, request tracker and a website. The machines hosting them should scale to a few more game projects, at least. You're all welcome, but I guess we're going to have to get some more folks with spare machines and bandwidth to support the whole open source gaming community. That said, we've done pretty well with the odd collection of boxes our developers have lent us.
This is the most positive slashdot thread I've ever seen. I really hope we can shift some of the momentum from the list to actual efforts to improve the situation. Obviously there's a lot of work to do in terms of researching the drug problem and developing solutions to the harmful effects of drug use.
I was a drug user for quite some time (marijuana, lsd, psilocybin, ecstacy, speed, MDA and so forth). My drug use eventually caused 'toxic psychosis', a mental illness I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. However, I still believe that people should be able to choose what they do what they will with regards to their own wellbeing, be it choosing whether to wear a seat belt, hang gliding, blasphemy (I'm an atheist myself), or using drugs.
I believe that drugs are a health issue, and should be treated as such. I'd like to advance our understanding of the causes of sociological patterns of ill health, and educate people that alienating people involved in the illegal drug-using culture through poorly considered laws only serves to harm the people you love most.
I'd like to support and work with those who are trying to improve the situation, and provide my experiences as a resource for those who want to understand why people take drugs, the effects on drug users by these laws and the effects of the drugs themselves.
My prefered medium for disussion is mailing lists, but any other pointers are welcome. Feel free to email me if you have any questions about drugs and mental illness.
I haven't looked at the moderation system suggested yet, but I've been developing a similar concept of my own for WorldForge (the MMORPG project... you know you want it).
Basically the idea is to grant privilages according to one's reputation in the world. For instance, programmatically it is very simple to have a spell that raises a mountain out of the ocean. However, given into the wrong hands, all our oceans would be dripping from mountain tops.:-)
We really only want very wise players/characters to have the use of such spells. The idea is that the gaming community could decide who is wise, through a similar process of moderation. Meta moderation is quite a good idea. In another example, someone who comes into an Oriental style game ranting about Australian Rules Football might have the privilage to speak in the world revoked but a mage of great (moderation) power. The player would have to conduct an act that would bring him back into good repute, perhaps by performing a task for the mage. (details details...)
Anyway, there is no reason to make this system for WorldForge only, I think the principle can be applied to any number of environments... perhaps a mailing list community might grant the privilage for someone to post an attatchment to the mailing list. Again, a person with such a reputation probably wouldn't use it very often, just as a wise mage may be wise enough never to raise a mountain from the ocean.
Message boards are annother obvious application. What about Gnutella? The network is falling appart because people aren't sharing thier files. Why not moderate music sharers? I may choose only to share files with people who only share legal MP3s. Slowly people will start to be rewarded for doing the right thing.
IRC, CVS... the possibilities are intriguing. I've started a sourceforge project to develop a generic library for moderation. Anyone who would like to come help is welcome to:
http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/democracy/
(There's no mailing list there... but check back in a few hours when the sourceforge cron kicks in.)
We've certainly thought about it, but there are obvious problems when the source code is freely available. In fact, we're quite limited in what data we can send to the client. It's considered that only what would be available to the senses of the character should be made available to the client. This is one of the big problems. Some have suggested closed-source codecs, and others think that random chunks of data won't really be prone to abuse. It's a serious challenge for open-source developers, I'd like to hear suggestions.
We'd like to make free-to-play games where possible, and this makes resources especially scarce. Anyway, we have to work within our means, including annoying things like players who demand their characters survive sleep, work and disconnections.;-)
Ok, I'm really tired now, and having just had my original emotional post consumed by netscape's instability, I'll try and make my point briefly.
I love the beatles. I'm 22 and grew up with the band. The contribution of Paul alone will likely never be repayed in royalties.
However, consider the situation.
Sometimes I want to go back and visit some of the old classics. Maybe there's a great song like "Without you, I'm nothing", done by Placebo and the great David Bowie that I'll likely not be able to find in the stores any more. I download the MP3, and feeling a bit guilty I think about buying the album.
Ok, so here's the drill. I go to the record store, days or weeks after the initial craving for a certain song. I pay thirty Australian dollars for a piece of plastic that should last years under all sorts of horrible stress, but of course gets a scratch a few days after buying it, ruining at least one song, and in the case of the beatles, probably a whole album. They are well known for the flow of concept within a record.
Of the thirty dollars I pay, most goes to recording companies who's politics and fundamental ignorance of the creative process are crippling the art of my idols.
The Beatles were the core of a marketing machine that persists today. The difference is that while they still managed to get their message across, that outlet has been denied many modern artists.
I would beg McCartney begin reform of the industry he benefited so much from, and then think about the nature of the mp3 community's thefts.
There are plenty of new business models to choose from, I leave as a reference but one suggestion:
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't buddism the science of happiness?
e .php?cid=4&lid=140
http://www.bswa.org/modules/mydownloads/singlefil
I know a lot of people are pretty angry about outsourcing. As an programmer in a western country I realise that my days of code cutting may soon be behind me. There are really two scenarios here:
Either Indian companies really can provide coding and IT services of the same quality as an australian team, or they can't.
If they can't, then this process will come to an end and I can make a good living writing code. On the other hand, I might be forced to think about doing something new. How about home automation? No one is in as good a position to help people sort out the bewildering array of hardware, software and interior design as someone who actually lives in my town.
I can imagine as home automation becomes more hackable, more and more people will want to make software modifications. If it's a quick hack, I can do it myself, if not I can call my team in india to put together a high quality mod for my customer's climate control/music system/garden fertilising system. I can provide a highly technical and productive service based on my local presence and feed my family too.
Comming back down to earth, I wonder whether outsourcing companies can truely provide the quality we need. Frankly, when I think about it, I hope they can. Cutting code just isn't as cool as hacking someone's house.
--
From the website:
"OSV is a marketing, advocacy and focus group, which aims to raise the profile of Open Source Software (OSS) in Victoria."
Well, realistically you wouldn't be able to skip anything, since one is hard pressed today to find broadcasts that don't include product placement or cross promotion.
"not to be rude or anything, but WF makes Mozilla look like linux - development is just plain glacial."
Yep, glacial is about right. I don't think anyone knew how long it would take to get a working game out, even one as simple as Acorn. At least now we have a core team that actually has experience in getting a game out there. I think that will be the key to our success from now onward.
Well we've got CVS, IRC, mailing lists, request tracker and a website. The machines hosting them should scale to a few more game projects, at least. You're all welcome, but I guess we're going to have to get some more folks with spare machines and bandwidth to support the whole open source gaming community. That said, we've done pretty well with the odd collection of boxes our developers have lent us.
Our first Massively Multiplayer Role Playing^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HSwine Herding Game.
http://www.worldforge.org/website/rules/acorn/
I was a drug user for quite some time (marijuana, lsd, psilocybin, ecstacy, speed, MDA and so forth). My drug use eventually caused 'toxic psychosis', a mental illness I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. However, I still believe that people should be able to choose what they do what they will with regards to their own wellbeing, be it choosing whether to wear a seat belt, hang gliding, blasphemy (I'm an atheist myself), or using drugs.
I believe that drugs are a health issue, and should be treated as such. I'd like to advance our understanding of the causes of sociological patterns of ill health, and educate people that alienating people involved in the illegal drug-using culture through poorly considered laws only serves to harm the people you love most.
I'd like to support and work with those who are trying to improve the situation, and provide my experiences as a resource for those who want to understand why people take drugs, the effects on drug users by these laws and the effects of the drugs themselves.
My prefered medium for disussion is mailing lists, but any other pointers are welcome. Feel free to email me if you have any questions about drugs and mental illness.
Thankyou,
Oliver White - ojw@unite.com.au
From the WorldForge team, congratulations!
"Trust the wisdom of Strousoup(sp?) on this one - design the first implimentation to throw it away, you're going to do it atleast once anyway."
It was Fred Brooks who said that, in his book "The Mythical Man Month."
Tis a good read.
I haven't looked at the moderation system suggested yet, but I've been developing a similar concept of my own for WorldForge (the MMORPG project... you know you want it).
:-)
Basically the idea is to grant privilages according to one's reputation in the world. For instance, programmatically it is very simple to have a spell that raises a mountain out of the ocean. However, given into the wrong hands, all our oceans would be dripping from mountain tops.
We really only want very wise players/characters to have the use of such spells. The idea is that the gaming community could decide who is wise, through a similar process of moderation. Meta moderation is quite a good idea. In another example, someone who comes into an Oriental style game ranting about Australian Rules Football might have the privilage to speak in the world revoked but a mage of great (moderation) power. The player would have to conduct an act that would bring him back into good repute, perhaps by performing a task for the mage. (details details...)
Anyway, there is no reason to make this system for WorldForge only, I think the principle can be applied to any number of environments... perhaps a mailing list community might grant the privilage for someone to post an attatchment to the mailing list. Again, a person with such a reputation probably wouldn't use it very often, just as a wise mage may be wise enough never to raise a mountain from the ocean.
Message boards are annother obvious application. What about Gnutella? The network is falling appart because people aren't sharing thier files. Why not moderate music sharers? I may choose only to share files with people who only share legal MP3s. Slowly people will start to be rewarded for doing the right thing.
IRC, CVS... the possibilities are intriguing. I've started a sourceforge project to develop a generic library for moderation. Anyone who would like to come help is welcome to:
http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/democracy/
(There's no mailing list there... but check back in a few hours when the sourceforge cron kicks in.)
We've certainly thought about it, but there are obvious problems when the source code is freely available. In fact, we're quite limited in what data we can send to the client. It's considered that only what would be available to the senses of the character should be made available to the client. This is one of the big problems. Some have suggested closed-source codecs, and others think that random chunks of data won't really be prone to abuse. It's a serious challenge for open-source developers, I'd like to hear suggestions.
;-)
:-)
We'd like to make free-to-play games where possible, and this makes resources especially scarce. Anyway, we have to work within our means, including annoying things like players who demand their characters survive sleep, work and disconnections.
Lots of fun problems.
Ok, I'm really tired now, and having just had my original emotional post consumed by netscape's instability, I'll try and make my point briefly.
0 3-penguin_4.html
I love the beatles. I'm 22 and grew up with the band. The contribution of Paul alone will likely never be repayed in royalties.
However, consider the situation.
Sometimes I want to go back and visit some of the old classics. Maybe there's a great song like "Without you, I'm nothing", done by Placebo and the great David Bowie that I'll likely not be able to find in the stores any more. I download the MP3, and feeling a bit guilty I think about buying the album.
Ok, so here's the drill. I go to the record store, days or weeks after the initial craving for a certain song. I pay thirty Australian dollars for a piece of plastic that should last years under all sorts of horrible stress, but of course gets a scratch a few days after buying it, ruining at least one song, and in the case of the beatles, probably a whole album. They are well known for the flow of concept within a record.
Of the thirty dollars I pay, most goes to recording companies who's politics and fundamental ignorance of the creative process are crippling the art of my idols.
The Beatles were the core of a marketing machine that persists today. The difference is that while they still managed to get their message across, that outlet has been denied many modern artists.
I would beg McCartney begin reform of the industry he benefited so much from, and then think about the nature of the mp3 community's thefts.
There are plenty of new business models to choose from, I leave as a reference but one suggestion:
http://linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-2000-03/lw-
I really hope this message gets back to Paul. You never know I suppose.
That's a truely fantastic idea you have there. I'll help hack it. :-)