Yes, absolutely. To him nothing is of any worth to anyone unless _he_ can take a cut of it- it's a really odd viewpoint to consider that people should not be allowed to make software and retain control over what's done with it! That's what the GPL is (I use it myself): making software and having some control over what's done with it. "You will take, develop, and expand this software of mine under _these_ conditions or not at all".
It's more than a little revealing that Bill Gates finds this deeply inequitable. If we are not allowed to develop software that is our own according to him, are we allowed to have it? Are we allowed to have money? To go around un-watched and un-monitored? You know you have a problem when such a powerful guy views you essentially as a serf. We don't get to have property (at least not intellectual property under the GPL by our own choice)- we ARE property, to him.
We're just snotty, disobedient, ill-behaved property;) Bill Gates has yet to figure out how to bring us into line. At least there's more of us than there is of him- and he can get let go for monopolistic crimes, and he can probably get let off even for attempting IP terrorism (how? easy- put in moles into key Free software projects, and try to sneak in bugs faster than people can identify and object to them. I never said it would work _well_...)...but he is very unlikely to get the government to revoke people's right to author software and license it under whatever terms they please, no matter how much he argues that it's against national security. That's pretty basic, and he's objecting to some pretty foundation stuff there.
He'd better just get used to causing as much damage as he can while being let go by the courts, because that is as much as he can reasonably accomplish. Of course, this is what he's been doing all along, and it's done MS some public relations damage, but he really had better keep on doing it because nothing else will work.
How true! This is not a triumph of the American economy- it is a triumph of misleading marketing, and I'm _not_ talking about selling copies of Word here. It goes like this....
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue! Microsoft: Blood is blue! Microsoft: Blood is blue! Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Real World: No it's not. Blood is red.
Microsoft: Blood is blue! Microsoft: Blood is blue! Microsoft: Blood is blue! Microsoft: Blood is blue! Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Real World: Well, _I_ thought blood was red- at least that's what I learned in school.
Microsoft: Blood is blue! Microsoft: Blood is blue! Microsoft: Blood is blue! Microsoft: Blood is blue! Microsoft: Blood is blue! Microsoft: Blood is blue! Microsoft: Blood is blue! Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Real World: All right all right. Let's be reasonable here. You can't have it all your way...
Real World:...therefore, blood is purple. Oh... and Microsoft contributes something to the economy.
Just because Microsoft claim continually that they are indispensable to the economy doesn't mean they're not outright lying. What if the destruction they've done to the tech sector paved the way for the recession we now have? Do we let them cause even more destruction until we're in a fullblown Depression, except for Bill's bank account?
Do you have any idea how damning a 17% unfavorable opinion is, or how pathetic a 60% favorable opinion is? That's not normal.
The _normal_ response to such inquiries is basically a nodding of the head and 'fine, fine'... How do you like Ford? *nod* 'fine, fine'... How do you like Pepsi, Nestle, Craftsman? *nod, nod* 'oh, they're fine...'
You have a lot to learn about marketing and opinion polling. Read that as "forty percent of people polled didn't nod their heads and blandly like Microsoft". Forty percent. That's a huge amount of animosity, and it is well and fairly earned over the course of many years- in spite of continual, loud, desperate PR offensives the whole time.
Um, the facts aren't contested. Almost all of Jackson's Findings of Fact were upheld, and well they should be as they were thoroughly realistic.
I'm afraid me in my narrow mind, as well as a full en banc panel of the Court of Appeals, have all found MS guilty. There just isn't going to be a sentence because our government is corrupt and stupid, meaning that the only chance of not effectively being dominated by Microsoft forever is to resort to terrorism. That really sucks. Aren't we trying to fight a war on terrorism? What possible good can there be about showing the government is corrupt and useless and will not protect its own people? It's as good as saying, "if you don't want Microsoft to rule you, YOU fight them". Forget law, forget economic leverage: you have to fight them yourself, against the vast spectrum of dirty tricks and extortionist behaviors they've reduced to business as usual. Fight them _alone_. Have fun! Curl up and die!
If I was given to praying for things, I would pray that our government does not hand us Americans and the rest of the world this Bill of goods. It's seriously well established that you can't compete with Microsoft using anything resembling normal, healthy business practices. They're just too vicious and will do anything, and they want total control- if you play nice, they steamroller you. The only reason there _is_ any choice at all out there is because humans can be contrary- and even this could be flattened in future years. It could be _illegal_ to not use Microsoft for everything, and there will be people still taking MS's side even at that extreme.
I want somebody _appropriate_ to take _appropriate_ action about this. If it's left to ill-funded, desperate individuals, those individuals will be _forced_ into terrorism: either sending anthrax to MS employees (this has already happened!) or tearing hell out of MS's technical infrastructure and laying waste to MS customers while MS yawns and does nothing.
The only counter to terrorism is justice- throwing out justice in this situation is a painfully bad idea. Do they think this is a game? Have they been drinking MS koolaid and secretly believe the best kind of market is one where you can only get one thing and there's no competition? That there is no employer but Microsoft, no wealth but Microsoft, and having Microsoft keep all the money is the best thing for the country and the economy?
Christ! Furrfu!
Sorry: since the news of the proposed settlement I haven't been as patient with tripe-minded pedantic MS apologists as I ought to be:P
DOJ: "Yes, you're right, we're sorry. We're going to punish you by telling you never to do it again! Here's your gun back."
No no- you mean:
DOJ: "Yes, you're right, we're sorry. We're going to punish you by telling you never t... no... no, we're going to punish you by saying publically that it would be nice if everybody was nice, not implying that YOU aren't nice or anything, okay?"
Terry Pratchett, obviously. The reason he's popular is because his writing's seriously alive, rich and inventive. It's honest stuff- compare it to another fantasy phenomenon, Harry Potter, and see how plastic the latter feels.
People mention William Gibson- I can see that, primarily for the 'Burning Chrome' stories and 'Neuromancer', but I think Pat Cadigan will stand the test of time better. "Mindplayers" is an incredible piece of work.. I haven't got "Synners" yet, but "Fools" is so much more ambitious that it gives you whiplash, and pulls it off. I don't know anyone else who is able to use _typeface_ for _dramatic effect_, put it that way. There's a moment towards the end of Fools (which uses typeface to indicate narrating personality) that gives you chills when you notice the identity 'slip'. William Gibson doesn't do that, he just wallows in grit, though some of his stuff has formidable intensity.
I think Douglas Coupland will be seen as an important author in the long run. It's very easy to write rubbish that's 'slice of life' and ordinary, but it's very much another matter to set up hidden tensions and suspense, beneath the surface of the narrative, and then finish by resolving them still without obviously calling attention to them: my pet example is in the online version of 'Microserfs' in which the tension has to do with the narrator's dead brother, a conflict never dealt with, and finally brought into the open- what's being resolved isn't about the father's problems, it's the way the narrator's life has led him to his own resolution- concluding with the blinking lights that characterise the narrator's life lighting up the sleeping father. I realize a lot of people will think this is reading ridiculously much into it, but that's exactly my point- this is why he's a legitimately great author. His writing makes very big points in very, very understated ways.
Finally- in an utterly, totally different field, remember Dale Carnegie and "How To Win Friends And Influence People"? The guy writing books like that in the modern day is Harvey Mackay, an envelope tycoon with a lot of basic common sense and honesty. As usual, he's continued to write even after he's said most of what he had to say- not that the sequels are bad, they hold up well- but the primary book by him is called "Swim With The Sharks Without Getting Eaten Alive", and it certainly will stand the test of time- and will also tell you not to buy anything in a room with a chandelier in it;)
Actually, it's more like the problem is clear but unprioritized goals that have zilch to do with actual gameplay fun. This might have changed since I hung out with WorldForge people- dunno- doesn't sound like it.
By this I mean: by the time you actually _have_ elves and barbarians and such, or whatever you have in the way of gameplay, you also have houses composed of zillions of individual 'brick' objects which are independently quarried and sold by autonomous mason software 'agents' so peasants make their houses brick by brick and you can do the same- it'll take several months- and at some point you have to ask, why? WorldForge much more closely resembles an academic project than any sort of game. This is a fine thing- but I don't think that means it's going to turn INTO a game, ever.
What's going to be done is 'everything'. If you needed half a brick, you'd be able to go to a house anywhere, break the wall, get a brick out, break the brick and dynamically form two half-brick objects. A new type of object! Exciting! Who knows what you can do in a game where you can dynamically create wholly new types of objects due to the great flexibility of the underlying software! I'll tell you- you can sit there holding half a brick. If that bores you, you can break it again, and sit there holding a quarter of a brick. Maybe you can hit somebody with it, though there is a (laudable) pacifist streak in WorldForge development that makes it questionable you'd be allowed to do unkind things like that.
WorldForge is an impressive dream- but it shouldn't be considered a game. Perhaps it'd be better considered an artificial-life or artificial-world project.
Seeing as our government is going to refuse to even attempt to hold Microsoft responsible to obeying the law, and considering the well known plans Microsoft has for us all...
Could the next bright fellow who comes up with a catastrophic failure in Microsoft's Passport or.NET software PLEASE NOT TELL THEM ABOUT IT!
Damn it! Can we stop freaking collaborating with them and propping them up and FIXING their problems for them while they rape our country and back us all into a corner? Can we get real here for just a second? Can we have some sense of proportion, as in 'these are the band of criminals found guilty in appeal after appeal who have corrupted even our _government_ and legal system and want us all either under control or out of commission'?
I am _ashamed_ that people are still collaborating with them. Anyone who researches this type of exploit- if you can't have the guts to use it as a weapon (since apparently that is the ONLY weapon we have against them) can you at least quietly shrug, and throw the exploit away without telling anyone? Mind not telling the enemy, please? Is that so very much to ask?
We Americans have learned _that_ harsh lesson lately, and it cuts both ways.
If the government will not take our side, I am certain that some people will resort to terrorism.
This does not even have to take the form of sending Anthrax to Microsoft employees (though it might- in some cases- this isn't a game). Before reading this article, I was prepared for it by a cnet article on Passport.
Turns out, a guy out there spent half an hour breaking Passport security, and wrote a little program that gives the attacker complete access to the victim's credit card information, etc etc- the WHOLE passport data collection and write access- just by the victim opening an email in Hotmail.
This guy trotted along to Microsoft, told them of the problem, and chose to not publicise the attack (that's been shown to work) until Microsoft fixed its little booboo.
He _cooperated_ with Microsoft- trying to _help_ them.
Right now, that course of action doesn't hold a lot of weight with me, don't know about you. It seems _treasonous_ to me, in fact: he is cooperating with an entity that is putting the United States substantially at risk and trying to put its balls in a vise on top of that. How long must this go on until we figure out the real situation?
The dark beauty of terrorism is that it doesn't require broad popular support (not that Microsoft is getting broad popular support either- but they have leverage and are ready to use it in malice). I personally have zero interest in Hotmail or Passport, use an older Mac and rebel simply by refusing to deal with all that Microsoft garbage, but I thoroughly understand and support those who are picking at the decayed rotting bits holding Microsoft software together. I can't do that, but more power to those who can- you only need one hole to totally compromise Passport and Microsoft's whole New World Order in the making. Remember that.
And for God's sake stop telling MS about these things! Don't you realise there's a freaking war on? And I do not refer to US vs. (insert middle east country here). We _know_ what _our_ war is about. Is it so much to ask that those who can find chinks in Microsoft's armor cooperate with those who are ready to USE those flaws, and not with the enemy?
I just hope that ONE PERSON reading this gets a clue and is in a position to do damage to MS rather than licking their hand and offering to do their repair work for them. How much are you paying them to do their security work for them while being forbidden to talk to your peers about the problems you found? Quislings!
Go right ahead. Free publicity and I might get some additional codebases to play with, like a proper C port or a Linux port or better file reading libs for sound files. Or realtime- that's the big thing that's missing right now, and I'm not competent enough with sound hardware to cover that base myself.
Somehow I think we have a failure to communicate here...;)
Build it into hardware! I'm certainly not going to, and I can point you to numerous pro mastering engineers who are not like us computer geek slashdot readers- they really NEED realtime hardware before they can make use of the tech, even if it's better than what they have.
Besides, if you try to sell software I will just laugh at you and give your customers copies of my own original software for nothing. Go right ahead and spend money on marketing, if you're serious and not just some wanker talking big and not doing anything. Here's the source, go nuts... note the GPL at the top, and sell away my friend, just have your source ready to include...
*g* didn't notice that until just now. It's meant to be read as 'hi-pass' not "this is one hip-ass dither, babee!";)
Hi-pass is a type of filter. You start with regular white noise, which has substantial low and midrange content (it's not particularly colored and contains all frequencies- this is what flat and TPDF dither are made of).
The thing is, with dither you don't want low frequencies- they don't help linearise the system particularly, they just add energy to the noise floor unproductively.
So, you filter the white noise: you can do this by producing a high-attenuated version (averaging nearby samples, for instance) and then subtracting it from the original so that only the highs are left.
Do that a couple times and you might have a fairly sharp cutoff, like 18db per octave.
The Hipass dither in my software is _100_ pole: it does this "produce averaged version and subtract it from the original" 100 times before you get a signal out. That produces a very near-Nyquist dither component. Truly it is indeed a hip-ass dither;)
Actually, dither and wordlength reduction software can be objectively measured using FFTs and spectrograms of the noise floor. So it doesn't have to be for sale, for its claims to be tested:)
Also, it's audio software, so it produces a sound-file output. The way you test that is by listening to the result...
Thanks for the article, guys- what a nice thing for me to read right now. I'm fighting off an attack of what is probably tendinitis rather than, say, carpal tunnel, due to one too many 12 hour days working on _my_ software.
I do dithering/wordlength reduction software under the GPL (it's not C code, mind you, but it is still GPLed) and the last version did fairly well, competing with some extremely formidable proprietary dithers from places like the POW-R Consortium and Apogee. That stuff pretty well held its own for the most part with the best that the proprietary world had to offer.
Over the last week, I've drastically overhauled my noise-shaping code, and am trying to get final work done on a new release of my software- and this time, I've blown everything proprietary out of the water completely (w.r.t quality of output- not workflow convenience- I don't do hardware, or realtime output). I've got one dither that's consistently -160 db noise floor from 0-2K. Another one hits -170 db at 1.8 and 3K, right where the ear is most sensitive. Another steadily drops to below -170 db at the lowest frequencies. Another uses unusual methods to produce soundstage depth (a comb-filter-like noise floor- never heard of anyone doing that one before).
This is _all_ GPLed. You can't use any of it in proprietary software without violating the public license it's released under.
This is also _all_ mine. It's not even written in C, much less based on GPLed code from others. (That's one reason why my file reading routines suck;) ). It uses none of the 'many hands make light work' concept of open source- I do all the work and have not had any offers of help from anyone at all, except some mastering engineers who've given their thoughts on early versions of its audio performance, and they don't write code.
With that in mind, I have to say I'm delighted to see SleepyCat's take on all this: it confirms what I had suspected, and gives me hope for the future. You can make money on open source by indulging in people's desires to NOT play along and open their own source. You can charge them to NOT share (if they share, they get it for free. How much is your paranoia worth to you?;) )
The only requirements are that YOU have to do the work- which stands to reason- that you have to not only do all the work but also outperform everybody else- and that there have to be enough others out there who want what you have to give, but won't themselves share. Basically, you're charging people for their own greed. If they were willing to give their work to the world as you do, they'd get your help for nothing. But if they want what you have, and won't do as you do- they must either do without, or come to terms with you. (or rip you off outright, but that's another story).
It's inspiring to see how these folks do it, and definitely something to emulate- makes me glad I've been using pure GPL all along, rather than something like LGPL. They're so right- you can't exert this kind of pressure UNLESS your 'free' licensing is hardcore 'libre' with no concessions to business. It's gotta scare the suits and the lawyers enough so they come to you and say 'maybe we can work something out' (*kaching!* good to do business with ya!).
Wonderful to see this. And again it's so simple that I marvel that nobody else has been suggesting it- I thought I had sort of invented this concept for myself out of necessity and it's reassuring to see that people have actually tried it and it works. You have to have a product so good that people _do_ want a piece of it- a libre license that scares the suits- and a willingness to release private versions under non-free parallel licenses to companies that want what you have, but won't share code themselves.
Maybe this _does_ lead to doing yourself out of a job, in the future when everybody is nice and shares;) or maybe the 'bar' is very high, in that you really have to perform to get in such a position. If that's the case, then (a) explains why I haven't made money this way yet, and (b) if 20 db better noise floor than the top proprietary dither isn't enough, I'll keep working until it's 30 db;) it looks like some entire concepts like indeterminate-order noise shaping are mine alone. I don't think you can even get error distributions anything like what I'm getting without it- so for a change, rather than indispensable technology being owned by a patent holder, indispensable technology is 'owned' by the sphere of GPLed free software. Any arguments that code or algorithms are property and not speech will only enhance the value of this 'ownership'. Or to put it another way: so software is not speech? So you can 'own' an algorithm, huh? Well, _this_ one you can't have unless you go libre with your own code, or pay! *kaching*
Hah!
I gotta get back to work- the main dithers have been hammered out, but I need to adapt some of the others, like Logic and Ambient, to the new error-feedback routines. They probably won't outperform the others in numbers, but they're geared to different needs: Logic turned out to be good at revealing depth cues accurately, and Ambient was particularly warm with very authoritative bass, and I gotta see if I can bring out those qualities more.
If there's anybody else out there capable of doing this type of thing in other fields, please, please, go for it with every bit of effort you can come up with! Maybe 'open source' as a way of not having to do as much of the work has an immediate appeal to people- but the only way we're gonna REALLY get Software Libre out there and impossible to avoid is if you do the work yourself, do it BETTER than anyone else can (pick your field carefully, and narrowly!) and then put your stuff out with a hardcore libre license and a willingness to charge for dual-licensing! It's gotta be 'This is mine- you either share, or you pay. My way or the highway'. That's the only way to win...
Actually, it's the foundation of American politics and the reason we have a republic instead of a democracy. I guess you've never read Federalist #10!
Suffice to say- you are suggesting that a majority should override a small minority's preference to maintain their culture. That is an un-American thing to suggest, and you should be ashamed of yourself and read up on the principles and founding values of our country:)
"the corporations are prevailing with the will and consent of each and every one of their customers."
Wow- the Microsoft employees are taking a broader view than they used to:) must be feeling their oats after corrupting the U.S. courts and beating the government;)
To me, this just highlights the suitability of open source for severely vertical markets like EFX. The fact is, what's right for Joe Sixpack is NOT necessarily right for Industrial Light And Magic. The Salon article bemoaned how Linux OpenGL was so heavily biased towards Quake- well, think for a second about how much use DirectX would be to ILM! When you have technologies that can cover both a cruder mass market and a specialised vertical market, generally the vertical market will get trodden on completely.
How does this apply to Linux in EFX? Simple- people can talk about how it's difficult to get EFX companies to share their proprietary _application_ code, but have you considered the reverse- how easy it is for such companies to get whatever information they need on the Linux code? Hell, they _own_ their own OS code under the same terms as any of us. They don't have to go hat in hand to Microsoft begging "Oh please fix this graphics API optimization that gets the consumers 5 more FPS in quake but hurts our image quality" or something- under the terms of open source/free software, they have total access to anything they need to know- and being specialists, unlike Joe Sixpack they can _use_ that information. And they do- and they are. This genie ain't going back in the bottle.
How do we make them advance the state of free software in general, rather than just using it as a platform for their proprietary stuff? (for those of us who feel this is necessary- some would consider it an imposition!) Simple, but not easy. Beat them. The only way to do it is to find a specific, incredibly narrow area where you as an individual, or a small team of OSS coders, can beat the best the proprietary world has to offer. Then do it- and put the code out as GPL. If you're the sole coder you can strike deals with commercial, proprietary guys to let them use the same code under a different license, letting them off the hook- but keep the GPLed version up to date.
This can be incredibly narrowly focussed. For instance, clouds. Clouds are a fractal phenomenon that are not easy to render volumetrically. To this day, EFX houses will sometimes handle clouds by use of a huge water tank with paints in it, rather than trying to program them. Figure out a way to do perfect CGI clouds fast, and GPL it. Put it out there for use by the great and small. Figure out new ways to do terrains, or raytracing, or to computer-render realistic fabrics- the tough stuff. Do that, and GPL it, rather than trying to persuade someone to GPL _their_ work to suit you.
Works for me (I write dithers and wordlength reducers).
To the extent that if you intend to get a job working in movie EFX you will HAVE to know Linux- and if you come around advocating for Windows you will be seen as an unprofessional hobbyist loser.
And also, there comes a point when things are not subjective. If someone thinks concrete is squooshy and makes pillows out of it, they can believe all they want that concrete is squooshy, and they can ban all non-concrete pillows, and they can claim that non-concrete pillows are bad for capitalism, and at the end of the day when you go to sleep and lay your head on your concrete pillow it will STILL SUCK. And if you jump into bed too vigorously you'll smash your head in:)
You cannot _accept_ a claim like 'it would be better if everything was run by Microsoft' just because some people genuinely, passionately believe it. Their sincerity is not in question. Their underlying assumptions are _deeply_ in question, and there's lots of evidence to suggest that would be a really, really bad idea.
You can't go assuming people _don't_ want Microsoft in control of everything. People can be totally stupid! Or stupid in areas where they choose not to be educated. You have to get the real facts of the situation and make sure that they are being considered. The real facts of _this_ situation are that Microsoft does not handle power gracefully, and is really unqualified for the greater level of power they aspire to. Whether they'd win a 'popular vote' (Most Likely To Make A Good Worldwide Computing/Communications Infrastructure?) is irrelevant when you can look at the facts...
Yeah, but there's a problem- you have to be technical to understand if Microsoft is sharing useful information, or putting out misinformation. These are the people who would fake video evidence in COURT, what on earth gives you the idea that they would give out accurate information on hardware compatibility APIs? That element in the settlement requires that Microsoft be _trustworthy_. Insert hysterical laughter here...
Sorry- that's not the magic bullet either. Really, the only effective magic bullet is to not buy from them- as they expand they keep needing more money, so even buying from them at the _same_ rate that you did last year is going to hurt them, and buying from them less will hurt them even worse. That's what's going to do them serious injury, not government action. We can't trust government action at this point, so it's really up to us as individuals. Collective action can do a hell of a lot if you're patient. Never forget that Microsoft's needs _expand_ with its grasp: they are steadily more vulnerable to just this sort of attack.
The main use of a government breakup or severe penalty would be to soften the collapse of Microsoft that's as inevitable as the collapse of the dotcoms... it's a matter of valuation not measuring up to prospects...
Hm. There's an element of truth to that. I'm NOT glad, because this is corrupt (how many times have they been found guilty, guilty, guilty?), but at the same time I'm one of the people most firmly convinced that they _cannot_ really expand further, and are hitting the limits of that strategy. They're headed for a full-out collapse and already losing popular support- and they have no real plan to slow down or settle for less, which is the only thing that will save them longterm. Even if they did seize all communications for the world, all media, all electronic transactions, they would still need to expand and a crash at that point would be even more crippling and destructive.
Microsoft are a bubble, like the dotcom bubble. They are that way by design and show no interest in changing their strategy. The reason it would have been great (in a way) for the government to really slam them, is that it would've provided an excuse to change their strategy. It would have produced a recession- rather than a Depression. The way they're going now, we may see an all-out crash out of them yet- or the first serious terrorist war against a company, rather than a nation-state. I really don't think they're prepared for that, physically, mentally, or emotionally. Their blindness to such a concept is their main weakness.
Yes, I do think people will be trying to literally kill Microsoft employees. _I_ will not. What I'm doing is just trying to develop the best dither software out there, and make it GPLed open source;) this is not likely to earn me any money directly, but it might be a good tactical move against the likes of Microsoft, and so I'm perfectly clear on my motives. I'm at war too- just constructively rather than destructively.
I see myself as one of those who are competing with them, and that's how I choose to play it- and I'm more than willing to do without, and suffer loss of potential income, to do them harm. I don't think they really understand that, but it scares the piss out of 'em:)
Slashdot Mirror
It's more than a little revealing that Bill Gates finds this deeply inequitable. If we are not allowed to develop software that is our own according to him, are we allowed to have it? Are we allowed to have money? To go around un-watched and un-monitored? You know you have a problem when such a powerful guy views you essentially as a serf. We don't get to have property (at least not intellectual property under the GPL by our own choice)- we ARE property, to him.
We're just snotty, disobedient, ill-behaved property ;) Bill Gates has yet to figure out how to bring us into line. At least there's more of us than there is of him- and he can get let go for monopolistic crimes, and he can probably get let off even for attempting IP terrorism (how? easy- put in moles into key Free software projects, and try to sneak in bugs faster than people can identify and object to them. I never said it would work _well_...) ...but he is very unlikely to get the government to revoke people's right to author software and license it under whatever terms they please, no matter how much he argues that it's against national security. That's pretty basic, and he's objecting to some pretty foundation stuff there.
He'd better just get used to causing as much damage as he can while being let go by the courts, because that is as much as he can reasonably accomplish. Of course, this is what he's been doing all along, and it's done MS some public relations damage, but he really had better keep on doing it because nothing else will work.
How about postcards?
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Real World: No it's not. Blood is red.
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Real World: Well, _I_ thought blood was red- at least that's what I learned in school.
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Microsoft: Blood is blue!
Real World: All right all right. Let's be reasonable here. You can't have it all your way...
Real World: ...therefore, blood is purple. Oh... and Microsoft contributes something to the economy.
Just because Microsoft claim continually that they are indispensable to the economy doesn't mean they're not outright lying. What if the destruction they've done to the tech sector paved the way for the recession we now have? Do we let them cause even more destruction until we're in a fullblown Depression, except for Bill's bank account?
Microsoft has lawyers for that :)
The _normal_ response to such inquiries is basically a nodding of the head and 'fine, fine'... How do you like Ford? *nod* 'fine, fine'... How do you like Pepsi, Nestle, Craftsman? *nod, nod* 'oh, they're fine...'
You have a lot to learn about marketing and opinion polling. Read that as "forty percent of people polled didn't nod their heads and blandly like Microsoft". Forty percent. That's a huge amount of animosity, and it is well and fairly earned over the course of many years- in spite of continual, loud, desperate PR offensives the whole time.
I'm afraid me in my narrow mind, as well as a full en banc panel of the Court of Appeals, have all found MS guilty. There just isn't going to be a sentence because our government is corrupt and stupid, meaning that the only chance of not effectively being dominated by Microsoft forever is to resort to terrorism. That really sucks. Aren't we trying to fight a war on terrorism? What possible good can there be about showing the government is corrupt and useless and will not protect its own people? It's as good as saying, "if you don't want Microsoft to rule you, YOU fight them". Forget law, forget economic leverage: you have to fight them yourself, against the vast spectrum of dirty tricks and extortionist behaviors they've reduced to business as usual. Fight them _alone_. Have fun! Curl up and die!
If I was given to praying for things, I would pray that our government does not hand us Americans and the rest of the world this Bill of goods. It's seriously well established that you can't compete with Microsoft using anything resembling normal, healthy business practices. They're just too vicious and will do anything, and they want total control- if you play nice, they steamroller you. The only reason there _is_ any choice at all out there is because humans can be contrary- and even this could be flattened in future years. It could be _illegal_ to not use Microsoft for everything, and there will be people still taking MS's side even at that extreme.
I want somebody _appropriate_ to take _appropriate_ action about this. If it's left to ill-funded, desperate individuals, those individuals will be _forced_ into terrorism: either sending anthrax to MS employees (this has already happened!) or tearing hell out of MS's technical infrastructure and laying waste to MS customers while MS yawns and does nothing.
The only counter to terrorism is justice- throwing out justice in this situation is a painfully bad idea. Do they think this is a game? Have they been drinking MS koolaid and secretly believe the best kind of market is one where you can only get one thing and there's no competition? That there is no employer but Microsoft, no wealth but Microsoft, and having Microsoft keep all the money is the best thing for the country and the economy?
Christ! Furrfu!
Sorry: since the news of the proposed settlement I haven't been as patient with tripe-minded pedantic MS apologists as I ought to be :P
No no- you mean:
DOJ: "Yes, you're right, we're sorry. We're going to punish you by telling you never t... no... no, we're going to punish you by saying publically that it would be nice if everybody was nice, not implying that YOU aren't nice or anything, okay?"
"Here- have another gun."
People mention William Gibson- I can see that, primarily for the 'Burning Chrome' stories and 'Neuromancer', but I think Pat Cadigan will stand the test of time better. "Mindplayers" is an incredible piece of work.. I haven't got "Synners" yet, but "Fools" is so much more ambitious that it gives you whiplash, and pulls it off. I don't know anyone else who is able to use _typeface_ for _dramatic effect_, put it that way. There's a moment towards the end of Fools (which uses typeface to indicate narrating personality) that gives you chills when you notice the identity 'slip'. William Gibson doesn't do that, he just wallows in grit, though some of his stuff has formidable intensity.
I think Douglas Coupland will be seen as an important author in the long run. It's very easy to write rubbish that's 'slice of life' and ordinary, but it's very much another matter to set up hidden tensions and suspense, beneath the surface of the narrative, and then finish by resolving them still without obviously calling attention to them: my pet example is in the online version of 'Microserfs' in which the tension has to do with the narrator's dead brother, a conflict never dealt with, and finally brought into the open- what's being resolved isn't about the father's problems, it's the way the narrator's life has led him to his own resolution- concluding with the blinking lights that characterise the narrator's life lighting up the sleeping father. I realize a lot of people will think this is reading ridiculously much into it, but that's exactly my point- this is why he's a legitimately great author. His writing makes very big points in very, very understated ways.
Finally- in an utterly, totally different field, remember Dale Carnegie and "How To Win Friends And Influence People"? The guy writing books like that in the modern day is Harvey Mackay, an envelope tycoon with a lot of basic common sense and honesty. As usual, he's continued to write even after he's said most of what he had to say- not that the sequels are bad, they hold up well- but the primary book by him is called "Swim With The Sharks Without Getting Eaten Alive", and it certainly will stand the test of time- and will also tell you not to buy anything in a room with a chandelier in it ;)
By this I mean: by the time you actually _have_ elves and barbarians and such, or whatever you have in the way of gameplay, you also have houses composed of zillions of individual 'brick' objects which are independently quarried and sold by autonomous mason software 'agents' so peasants make their houses brick by brick and you can do the same- it'll take several months- and at some point you have to ask, why? WorldForge much more closely resembles an academic project than any sort of game. This is a fine thing- but I don't think that means it's going to turn INTO a game, ever.
What's going to be done is 'everything'. If you needed half a brick, you'd be able to go to a house anywhere, break the wall, get a brick out, break the brick and dynamically form two half-brick objects. A new type of object! Exciting! Who knows what you can do in a game where you can dynamically create wholly new types of objects due to the great flexibility of the underlying software! I'll tell you- you can sit there holding half a brick. If that bores you, you can break it again, and sit there holding a quarter of a brick. Maybe you can hit somebody with it, though there is a (laudable) pacifist streak in WorldForge development that makes it questionable you'd be allowed to do unkind things like that.
WorldForge is an impressive dream- but it shouldn't be considered a game. Perhaps it'd be better considered an artificial-life or artificial-world project.
Could the next bright fellow who comes up with a catastrophic failure in Microsoft's Passport or .NET software PLEASE NOT TELL THEM ABOUT IT!
Damn it! Can we stop freaking collaborating with them and propping them up and FIXING their problems for them while they rape our country and back us all into a corner? Can we get real here for just a second? Can we have some sense of proportion, as in 'these are the band of criminals found guilty in appeal after appeal who have corrupted even our _government_ and legal system and want us all either under control or out of commission'?
I am _ashamed_ that people are still collaborating with them. Anyone who researches this type of exploit- if you can't have the guts to use it as a weapon (since apparently that is the ONLY weapon we have against them) can you at least quietly shrug, and throw the exploit away without telling anyone? Mind not telling the enemy, please? Is that so very much to ask?
furrfu...
If the government will not take our side, I am certain that some people will resort to terrorism.
This does not even have to take the form of sending Anthrax to Microsoft employees (though it might- in some cases- this isn't a game). Before reading this article, I was prepared for it by a cnet article on Passport.
Turns out, a guy out there spent half an hour breaking Passport security, and wrote a little program that gives the attacker complete access to the victim's credit card information, etc etc- the WHOLE passport data collection and write access- just by the victim opening an email in Hotmail.
This guy trotted along to Microsoft, told them of the problem, and chose to not publicise the attack (that's been shown to work) until Microsoft fixed its little booboo.
He _cooperated_ with Microsoft- trying to _help_ them.
Right now, that course of action doesn't hold a lot of weight with me, don't know about you. It seems _treasonous_ to me, in fact: he is cooperating with an entity that is putting the United States substantially at risk and trying to put its balls in a vise on top of that. How long must this go on until we figure out the real situation?
The dark beauty of terrorism is that it doesn't require broad popular support (not that Microsoft is getting broad popular support either- but they have leverage and are ready to use it in malice). I personally have zero interest in Hotmail or Passport, use an older Mac and rebel simply by refusing to deal with all that Microsoft garbage, but I thoroughly understand and support those who are picking at the decayed rotting bits holding Microsoft software together. I can't do that, but more power to those who can- you only need one hole to totally compromise Passport and Microsoft's whole New World Order in the making. Remember that.
And for God's sake stop telling MS about these things! Don't you realise there's a freaking war on? And I do not refer to US vs. (insert middle east country here). We _know_ what _our_ war is about. Is it so much to ask that those who can find chinks in Microsoft's armor cooperate with those who are ready to USE those flaws, and not with the enemy?
I just hope that ONE PERSON reading this gets a clue and is in a position to do damage to MS rather than licking their hand and offering to do their repair work for them. How much are you paying them to do their security work for them while being forbidden to talk to your peers about the problems you found? Quislings!
Somehow I think we have a failure to communicate here... ;)
Besides, if you try to sell software I will just laugh at you and give your customers copies of my own original software for nothing. Go right ahead and spend money on marketing, if you're serious and not just some wanker talking big and not doing anything. Here's the source, go nuts... note the GPL at the top, and sell away my friend, just have your source ready to include...
Hi-pass is a type of filter. You start with regular white noise, which has substantial low and midrange content (it's not particularly colored and contains all frequencies- this is what flat and TPDF dither are made of).
The thing is, with dither you don't want low frequencies- they don't help linearise the system particularly, they just add energy to the noise floor unproductively.
So, you filter the white noise: you can do this by producing a high-attenuated version (averaging nearby samples, for instance) and then subtracting it from the original so that only the highs are left.
Do that a couple times and you might have a fairly sharp cutoff, like 18db per octave.
The Hipass dither in my software is _100_ pole: it does this "produce averaged version and subtract it from the original" 100 times before you get a signal out. That produces a very near-Nyquist dither component. Truly it is indeed a hip-ass dither ;)
Also, it's audio software, so it produces a sound-file output. The way you test that is by listening to the result...
So- you're thinking of emulating, say, Somalia? :)
I do dithering/wordlength reduction software under the GPL (it's not C code, mind you, but it is still GPLed) and the last version did fairly well, competing with some extremely formidable proprietary dithers from places like the POW-R Consortium and Apogee. That stuff pretty well held its own for the most part with the best that the proprietary world had to offer.
Over the last week, I've drastically overhauled my noise-shaping code, and am trying to get final work done on a new release of my software- and this time, I've blown everything proprietary out of the water completely (w.r.t quality of output- not workflow convenience- I don't do hardware, or realtime output). I've got one dither that's consistently -160 db noise floor from 0-2K. Another one hits -170 db at 1.8 and 3K, right where the ear is most sensitive. Another steadily drops to below -170 db at the lowest frequencies. Another uses unusual methods to produce soundstage depth (a comb-filter-like noise floor- never heard of anyone doing that one before).
This is _all_ GPLed. You can't use any of it in proprietary software without violating the public license it's released under.
This is also _all_ mine. It's not even written in C, much less based on GPLed code from others. (That's one reason why my file reading routines suck ;) ). It uses none of the 'many hands make light work' concept of open source- I do all the work and have not had any offers of help from anyone at all, except some mastering engineers who've given their thoughts on early versions of its audio performance, and they don't write code.
With that in mind, I have to say I'm delighted to see SleepyCat's take on all this: it confirms what I had suspected, and gives me hope for the future. You can make money on open source by indulging in people's desires to NOT play along and open their own source. You can charge them to NOT share (if they share, they get it for free. How much is your paranoia worth to you? ;) )
The only requirements are that YOU have to do the work- which stands to reason- that you have to not only do all the work but also outperform everybody else- and that there have to be enough others out there who want what you have to give, but won't themselves share. Basically, you're charging people for their own greed. If they were willing to give their work to the world as you do, they'd get your help for nothing. But if they want what you have, and won't do as you do- they must either do without, or come to terms with you. (or rip you off outright, but that's another story).
It's inspiring to see how these folks do it, and definitely something to emulate- makes me glad I've been using pure GPL all along, rather than something like LGPL. They're so right- you can't exert this kind of pressure UNLESS your 'free' licensing is hardcore 'libre' with no concessions to business. It's gotta scare the suits and the lawyers enough so they come to you and say 'maybe we can work something out' (*kaching!* good to do business with ya!).
Wonderful to see this. And again it's so simple that I marvel that nobody else has been suggesting it- I thought I had sort of invented this concept for myself out of necessity and it's reassuring to see that people have actually tried it and it works. You have to have a product so good that people _do_ want a piece of it- a libre license that scares the suits- and a willingness to release private versions under non-free parallel licenses to companies that want what you have, but won't share code themselves.
Maybe this _does_ lead to doing yourself out of a job, in the future when everybody is nice and shares ;) or maybe the 'bar' is very high, in that you really have to perform to get in such a position. If that's the case, then (a) explains why I haven't made money this way yet, and (b) if 20 db better noise floor than the top proprietary dither isn't enough, I'll keep working until it's 30 db ;) it looks like some entire concepts like indeterminate-order noise shaping are mine alone. I don't think you can even get error distributions anything like what I'm getting without it- so for a change, rather than indispensable technology being owned by a patent holder, indispensable technology is 'owned' by the sphere of GPLed free software. Any arguments that code or algorithms are property and not speech will only enhance the value of this 'ownership'. Or to put it another way: so software is not speech? So you can 'own' an algorithm, huh? Well, _this_ one you can't have unless you go libre with your own code, or pay! *kaching*
Hah!
I gotta get back to work- the main dithers have been hammered out, but I need to adapt some of the others, like Logic and Ambient, to the new error-feedback routines. They probably won't outperform the others in numbers, but they're geared to different needs: Logic turned out to be good at revealing depth cues accurately, and Ambient was particularly warm with very authoritative bass, and I gotta see if I can bring out those qualities more.
If there's anybody else out there capable of doing this type of thing in other fields, please, please, go for it with every bit of effort you can come up with! Maybe 'open source' as a way of not having to do as much of the work has an immediate appeal to people- but the only way we're gonna REALLY get Software Libre out there and impossible to avoid is if you do the work yourself, do it BETTER than anyone else can (pick your field carefully, and narrowly!) and then put your stuff out with a hardcore libre license and a willingness to charge for dual-licensing! It's gotta be 'This is mine- you either share, or you pay. My way or the highway'. That's the only way to win...
Suffice to say- you are suggesting that a majority should override a small minority's preference to maintain their culture. That is an un-American thing to suggest, and you should be ashamed of yourself and read up on the principles and founding values of our country :)
Wow- the Microsoft employees are taking a broader view than they used to :) must be feeling their oats after corrupting the U.S. courts and beating the government ;)
"The libertarian solution would therefore be to open a free market in property and labor and keep it open" How?
How does this apply to Linux in EFX? Simple- people can talk about how it's difficult to get EFX companies to share their proprietary _application_ code, but have you considered the reverse- how easy it is for such companies to get whatever information they need on the Linux code? Hell, they _own_ their own OS code under the same terms as any of us. They don't have to go hat in hand to Microsoft begging "Oh please fix this graphics API optimization that gets the consumers 5 more FPS in quake but hurts our image quality" or something- under the terms of open source/free software, they have total access to anything they need to know- and being specialists, unlike Joe Sixpack they can _use_ that information. And they do- and they are. This genie ain't going back in the bottle.
How do we make them advance the state of free software in general, rather than just using it as a platform for their proprietary stuff? (for those of us who feel this is necessary- some would consider it an imposition!) Simple, but not easy. Beat them. The only way to do it is to find a specific, incredibly narrow area where you as an individual, or a small team of OSS coders, can beat the best the proprietary world has to offer. Then do it- and put the code out as GPL. If you're the sole coder you can strike deals with commercial, proprietary guys to let them use the same code under a different license, letting them off the hook- but keep the GPLed version up to date.
This can be incredibly narrowly focussed. For instance, clouds. Clouds are a fractal phenomenon that are not easy to render volumetrically. To this day, EFX houses will sometimes handle clouds by use of a huge water tank with paints in it, rather than trying to program them. Figure out a way to do perfect CGI clouds fast, and GPL it. Put it out there for use by the great and small. Figure out new ways to do terrains, or raytracing, or to computer-render realistic fabrics- the tough stuff. Do that, and GPL it, rather than trying to persuade someone to GPL _their_ work to suit you.
Works for me (I write dithers and wordlength reducers).
A very gratifying twist, I think :)
And also, there comes a point when things are not subjective. If someone thinks concrete is squooshy and makes pillows out of it, they can believe all they want that concrete is squooshy, and they can ban all non-concrete pillows, and they can claim that non-concrete pillows are bad for capitalism, and at the end of the day when you go to sleep and lay your head on your concrete pillow it will STILL SUCK. And if you jump into bed too vigorously you'll smash your head in :)
You cannot _accept_ a claim like 'it would be better if everything was run by Microsoft' just because some people genuinely, passionately believe it. Their sincerity is not in question. Their underlying assumptions are _deeply_ in question, and there's lots of evidence to suggest that would be a really, really bad idea.
You can't go assuming people _don't_ want Microsoft in control of everything. People can be totally stupid! Or stupid in areas where they choose not to be educated. You have to get the real facts of the situation and make sure that they are being considered. The real facts of _this_ situation are that Microsoft does not handle power gracefully, and is really unqualified for the greater level of power they aspire to. Whether they'd win a 'popular vote' (Most Likely To Make A Good Worldwide Computing/Communications Infrastructure?) is irrelevant when you can look at the facts...
Sorry- that's not the magic bullet either. Really, the only effective magic bullet is to not buy from them- as they expand they keep needing more money, so even buying from them at the _same_ rate that you did last year is going to hurt them, and buying from them less will hurt them even worse. That's what's going to do them serious injury, not government action. We can't trust government action at this point, so it's really up to us as individuals. Collective action can do a hell of a lot if you're patient. Never forget that Microsoft's needs _expand_ with its grasp: they are steadily more vulnerable to just this sort of attack.
The main use of a government breakup or severe penalty would be to soften the collapse of Microsoft that's as inevitable as the collapse of the dotcoms... it's a matter of valuation not measuring up to prospects...
Microsoft are a bubble, like the dotcom bubble. They are that way by design and show no interest in changing their strategy. The reason it would have been great (in a way) for the government to really slam them, is that it would've provided an excuse to change their strategy. It would have produced a recession- rather than a Depression. The way they're going now, we may see an all-out crash out of them yet- or the first serious terrorist war against a company, rather than a nation-state. I really don't think they're prepared for that, physically, mentally, or emotionally. Their blindness to such a concept is their main weakness.
Yes, I do think people will be trying to literally kill Microsoft employees. _I_ will not. What I'm doing is just trying to develop the best dither software out there, and make it GPLed open source ;) this is not likely to earn me any money directly, but it might be a good tactical move against the likes of Microsoft, and so I'm perfectly clear on my motives. I'm at war too- just constructively rather than destructively.
I see myself as one of those who are competing with them, and that's how I choose to play it- and I'm more than willing to do without, and suffer loss of potential income, to do them harm. I don't think they really understand that, but it scares the piss out of 'em :)