So, once again, Microsoft speaks, and millions of Open Source/Free Software geeks listen in rapt attention, then spend the next few days bitching about what was said.
Guys (and gals), listen to me: When you're paying attention to Mundie or Ballmer or Gates, and then bitching about how evil they are... You're not writing code.
Can't you see? By holding these "talks" and issuing press releases, Microsoft's intent is to distract you from writing code!
All that time you spent writing up a self-righteously indignant post to Slashdot, the time you spent checking your user profile to see if anyone replied to it or modded it up, that time you spent writing counter-replies, all that time you could have spent writing code is now lost. (And yes, by writing this post, I myself am guilty of that offense.)
Look, Microsoft's "Shared Source" initiative has two primary purposes: To throw the Open Source/Free Software advocates into disarray, and to keep the uninitiated from getting involved with Open Source/Free Software in the first place. The purpose behind this is to forestall any competition to Microsoft's.NET buildout, which is going to require a gargantuan engineering effort. Microsoft will have to write every line of code themselves, whereas a potential competitor may choose to leverage Open Source/Free Software works to get to market quicker. So naturally, Microsoft wants to scare as many people as possible away from OS/FS. The "Shared Source" ploy also theoretically gets them free debugging expertise, a job they have traditionally been unable or unwilling to do themselves.
My advice (which is worth every cent you paid for it): Write code. Ignore them and write some code.
Jump on SourceForge
I name SourceForce since it's one of the best known, but there's no reason you can't go to SunSite... er, MetaLab... er, iBiblio. Or the FSF's projects pages. Or any other site hosting Open Source/Free Software works.
Pick a project
There are thousands of pieces of software out there needing work. Some are sexier than others. Some are dull but crucial tools or pieces of infrastructure. Some don't exist at all, except in your imagination. Pick one.
Fix a bug.
Some consider the lack of a feature to be a bug, so add a feature if you like. Either way, it'll improve the quality of the project.
Microsoft is worried because a lot of the Open Source/Free Software alternatives are better than their own stuff. Where OS/FS alternatives fall short, they are rapidly catching up. Microsoft can make all the sophomoric remarks it wants about the GPL and Open Source/Free Software ("If you touch the GPL, your intellectual property will get cooties! Ooo, icky!"). But at the end of the day, the reliability and quality of OS/FS projects will be the compelling factor that causes users, both business and casual, to migrate over to our stuff. And that will happen only if the work is done to make the OS/FS projects better.
Personally, I can think of no more direct or effective rebuke to Mundie's "talk" than an audience full of people with laptops and 802.11b cards, deliberately and maliciously fixing bugs at him.
Jump on SourceForge. Pick a project. Fix a bug.
And then when you've checked in your fix, post about it here, so everyone can see the progress being made.
Well, a libc can easily be a meg or more, and with most Windowseses you need to read the entire thing into RAM to call any given function.
Which simply serves as further evidence that Microsoft botched it. Nowhere is it written that libc needs to be implemented as a single entity. As an example, you could have a "veneer" link library (conveniently named libc) which offers up all the libc functions, but implements none of them. Instead, it re-binds to sub-DLLs which implement libc operations separated according to general functionality (one DLL for string operations, another for file operations, another for printf() and friends, etc.). Thus, your program will only consume memory for the functions it's actually using.
This is not rocket science. Hell, it's not even computer science. It's just good, solid, clear thinking.
this practice is called code-sharing, and as alien as this sounds to open-source developers, it is actually quite common in modern software engineering practices.
Ha ha, very ha. Microsoft "invented" shared code very late in the game, well after Amiga and Mac, and probably after Sun as well. The.so extension on UNIX systems canonically means "Shared Object".
Besides, there's no legitimate reason the Windows shell DLLs couldn't themselves have dynamically linked against a libc DLL -- which itself could then be shared amongst all apps -- rather than exporting incompatible substitutes.
And no, libc is not too large/monolithic to make this work in a 4M system. The only difficult part is getting the functions and data that rely on global state (printf(), errno, et al) to work. But strcpy() is stateless, and as such would drop into a DLL trivially. That Microsoft screwed up something so agonizingly basic I feel speaks volumes about their, "modern software engineering practices."
Well, if you want to be pedantic, then yes, I'll concede that the GPL conditions under which you can make and distribute copies does constitute a "constraint" on that particular form of use.
However, I hope you would likewise concede that shrinkwrap "agreements" are considerably more onerous than the GPL:
The GPL permits unlimited copying and distribution under certain conditions. Shrinkwraps permit no redistribution whatsoever, under any circumstances.
Apart from the copying conditions, the GPL makes no attempt to constrain any other use of the software. Shrinkwraps purport to seriously constrain many uses, and forbid others.
Even if, as a software consumer, copying and redistribution are important to you, the GPL is vastly better than commercial shrinkwrap "agreements". And it's cheaper, too!
This is absolutely fantastic news. I find it astonishing that any court would consider these so-called "contracts" valid at all, but we have to take our victories where we can. This could be "camel's nose in the tent" that will lead to the invalidation of all shrinkwrap and clickwrap "agreements". For an explanation of why shrinkwrap agreements should not be allowed to exist, see my five-year-old editorial on the subject.
Those who worry that this decision may weaken the GPL, or any other Open Source/Free Software license, need not fear. Shrinkwrap "agreements" purport to constrain your right to use the software, whereas the GPL simply constrains your ability to copy and redistribute the software. In other words:
GPL: You may use this software in any way you wish, but copyright law prohibits you from making and distributing copies. If you wish to make and distribute copies, here are the terms you must agree to.
Typical shrinkwrap "agreement": You must agree to these onerous terms and conditions, or we won't let you use the software you just paid for at all.
Which one is the product of a less childish mind is left as an exercise for the reader.
The effect of striking down a shrinkwrap "agreement" would be that the default terms of copyright law would apply, which is that you would still be free to use your software, and you still wouldn't be allowed to make copies of it, but all the other "rights" the vendor granted themselves would vanish. This means that the spyware the vendor installed on your machine without your consent would now be actionable.
The effect of striking down the GPL would be that you'd still be able to use your copy of the software but, legally, you wouldn't be entitled to make and distribute copies anymore. However, the practical effect would likely be nil. By releasing under the GPL, the authors are representing that they won't go after you if make and distribute copies of the source. It is likely they would continue to make that representation even absent an enforceable GPL. And they would still have the right to go after people who distribute binaries absent source (since binaries are considered a protected derivative work). That means Linus could still go after Microsoft -- and, to be fair, any other organization -- that tried to loot Linux.
All in all, this decision is a good thing for consumers and users everywhere.
I'm about the fall into the classic Slashdot trap of offering armchair legal advice, but hey, everyone else is doing it.
Change the name of KIllustrator. While the name 'KIllustrator' may be defensible, it will be hideously costly to do so. Change it.
Other than that, I don't see the authors/University as obliged to do anything else. I hope German law isn't too different from US law in this respect. Absent a court judgment to the contrary, the legal fees incurred for drafting the threatening letter are Adobe's responsibility, not the victim's.
Under no circumstances should the author or University turn over a list of users (assuming such a thing exists). They have absolutely no call to make that demand.
I've heard from a reliable source that GnuPG has compatibility issues with PGP. Messages signed/encrypted by one aren't always correctly handled by the other.
Anyone know if there's an issue here, and what it actually is?
Computer games, in terms of raw dollars, are a bigger industry that motion pictures. There's little question that, though Wolfenstein-3D, Doom, and Quake, John Carmack is personally responsible for much of this success, and is a celebrity in his own right.
So my dumb question to John is: Have you ever been invited on the Dave Letterman Show? Come to that, has any major figure in computers ever been on Letterman (or Leno)? (Bill Gates doesn't count.)
Naturally, the direct marketers are trying to control the debate by controlling the terminology, harping on the (deceptive) meme: Advertising is Speech.
I offer a counter-meme: Advertising is Pollution.
What is pollution? It's stuff that's introduced into an environment where it doesn't belong or isn't wanted.
Empty beer cans don't belong in the street. They interfere with the flow of traffic. They are an eyesore. It reduces the street's utility by getting in the way of where you want or need to go. They are also a health and safety hazard. Even if there weren't laws against littering in the street, social forces would operate to compel people to not litter. It is, as best, impolite; at worst, monsterously destructive to the environment and quality of life.
Advertising is nearly identical. It interferes with the normal flow of information. It's an eyesore. It reduces the utility of the info-sphere by interposing itself between you and what you want or need to know. It is also intentionally deceptive. Yet purveyors of advertising portray themselves as a necessary, indispensible part of modern captialist society, when in fact what they're doing is willfully polluting the info-sphere with stuff they know isn't wanted by anyone.
Tell me: How is cold-calling me at dinnertime trying to convince me to switch long-distance carriers a benefit to my household, the community, and society as a whole? How is stuffing my snailmail box with pulp paper coupons offering 3% discounts on crap I've never tried a good thing for me? How many lovely trees have been killed to print and mail this garbage which, in my case, goes straight into the recycling bin, unread? Why should I support wasting bandwidth to distribute deceptive scams and snakeoil, bandwidth that I could be using to lose at Quake and HalfLife?
Just as there are appropriate places for empty beer cans, there are appropriate places for Internet advertising. The social order of the Internet has unequivocally decided that advertising is pollution, and when it appears in unsanctioned areas, it will not tolerated. Period.
You have a right to speak. You have no right to pollute. Get over it.
The program will print "not equal to", because of accumulated rounding errors in the LSBs of the float. This kind of miniscule inaccuracy is unavoidable when converting from base 10 to base 2, and it's absolutely unacceptable in heavyweight financial software. So the previous poster's question is quite valid.
What you really want for financial apps is string-based (bignum) or BCD (binary-coded decimal) math routines, where addition and subtraction always yield precise results. Intuit/Quicken has such math routines, refined and bullet-proofed over many years, which is one reason they have such a good reputation among financial institutions.
For personal finance, the requirements are less stringent. "Insignificant" rounding errors (are supposed to) get chopped before the user ever sees them. But bignum/BCD arithmetic prevents them from ever appearing in the first place, completely eliminating them as a possible source of error.
Actually, I may as well make that my interview question: Since the GnuCash engine is supposed to be general-purpose, what steps have been taken to assure potential big-ticket users that the unavoidable rounding errors present in binary floating point math will never have an unexpected effect on GnuCash's results?
(This is really oblique, but if, by chance, there's a scene on the roof of the Winter Garden Theater at Times Square; and if, by chance, Duke blows away a NPC in a Cat costume, then:)
(Apologies for the discombobulation, this is the only part of the Holy Grail I have not memorized. It's just too convoluted...)
Wuss. The following, though not scrupulously perfect, is from memory.
KING: Make sure the prince doesn't leave this room until I come and get him.
GUARD: Not to leave the room, even if you come and get him.
KING: No no, until I come and get him.
GUARD: Until you come and get him, we're not to enter the room.
KING: No no. You stay in the room, and make sure he doesn't leave.
GUARD: And you'll come and get him.
KING: Right.
GUARD: We're not to do anything apart from just stop him entering the room.
KING: No no, leaving the room.
GUARD: Leaving the room, yes.
KING: Got it?
GUARD: Oh! Oh, if we... er, if he... Uh...
KING: Look, it's quite simple.
GUARD: Er...
KING: You two just stay here, and make sure he doesn't leave. Got it?
GUARD: Oh, I remember. Er, can he leave the room with us?
KING: No, I want you to keep him in here, and make sure...
GUARD: Oh, we'll keep him in here, obviously. But if he had to leave, and we were with him...
KING: No, just keep him in here...
GUARD: Until you or anyone else...
KING: No, not anyone else, just me...
GUARD: Just you...
KING: Get back.
GUARD: Get back.
KING:...Right?
GUARD: Right, we'll stay here until you get back.
KING: And make sure he doesn't leave.
GUARD: Hmm?
KING: Make sure he doesn't leave.
GUARD: The prince?
KING: Yes! Make sure he...
GUARD: Oh! I'm sorry, I thought you meant him. (indicates other guard) Y'know it seemed a bit daft me having to guard him when he's a guard.
KING: Is that clear?
GUARD: Oh, quite clear, no problems.
[ KING turns to leave; GUARDS move to follow. ]
KING: Where are you going?
GUARD: We're coming with you.
KING: No, I want you to stay here, and make sure he doesn't leave!
GUARD: Oh, I see. Right.
"Without Zinc Oxide, you wouldn't have that bar of soap. <*ding*>
"The dish towels you use every day. <*ding*>
"Your toaster. <*ding*>
"That brassiere you're wearing. <*ding*>
"Your kitchen sink. <*ding*>
"Metal hooks. <*ding*>
"The heat control on your stove." <*ding*>
(etc., etc., etc., from The Kentucky Fried Movie.)
Schwab
Re:Music sharing is dead, but there's a new fronti
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Napster Going Legit
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...All we need to do is share it. Share the pr0n, that is.
Don't be too sure about that.
A former colleague used to be one of the sysadmins at one of the -- if not the -- largest sexually explicit server farms in the world (they're in Seattle; wish I could remember the name). These guys can assemble any kind of explicit site you want, filled to the brim with pictures, in under 24 hours. These guys apparently generate over two gigabytes a day just in server logs.
These guys have a database. A massive database. In this database is every picture on their server farm, with information on who the copyright holder is, who the photographer is, who the subjects are and their ages, when it was taken, how many times it's been viewed and from where, how much money has been charged to view it, etc. etc. etc. etc.
If an image previously thought to be public domain or otherwise unencumbered turns out to be copyrighted, they have the logs and database records to make sure they receive back-royalties.
There's a real industry here. Despite it's "unsavory" nature to the general public, any decentralized distribution of their "property" in noticable volumes will get you smacked down. (Due to rapid article expiration and non-existent searching capabilities, USENET does not constitute noticable volumes.)
BTW, most of the people who stand to lose Real Money(TM) in the sexually explicit image industry have a very different way of doing business. They don't send threatening letters. They don't sue you. They just come 'round in the dead of night and break your knees.
Internet protocol is Internet protocol, no matter what platform is spitting out the bits. Thus, you don't need "cooperation" among the console vendors to achieve compatibility. As long as the publisher hasn't made gratuitous changes to the game's protocol when porting to different platforms, it should all Just Work. It's therefore an issue amongst game publishers, not the console vendors.
The only thing I can think of that might be an issue is if what they're really trying to build is a "portal-based" gaming infrastructure, where you have to log into a Web page before you can launch the game proper (rather like Microsoft's Gaming Zone). This is, of course, nonsense, as has been proved by Quake. While a central catalog of running game servers is nice, you don't need a central server arbitrating gaming sessions; the server in question can handle it all. And, frankly, it's none of Nintendo's/Sega's/Microsoft's damn business which game I'm playing right now, and with whom.
Those who claim this kind of thing is peculiar to Japanese culture are misinformed. In fact, I would suspect it to be typical in the computer game industry. Computer game positions typically pay 10-20% less than "traditional" IT positions. It's also a "hit-based" industry. Computer games have become so ruinously expensive to produce that you either get filthy rich with a monster hit (like HalfLife), or you find yourself bankrupt when you discover your vision doesn't resonate with the market (like Daikatana).
I have some personal experience with this kind of "forced anonymization". I used to work for $(MUMBLE_SALTPILE_MUMBLE) in Redwood City, CA, which at that time was a game console company. One of the products being internally developed was a saved game file manipulator which would let you manage the very limited battery-backed RAM for storing saved games. Naturally, such a program does not consume a noticeable fraction of a CD-ROM, so the author walked around the office with a video camera saying Hi to various employees, compressed it, and put it on the CD-ROM as an easter egg.
Shortly before going gold, our corporate counsel ordered the video deleted from the CD. The reason? Competitors might see the video and recruit our people away.
The irony is that $(MUMBLE_SALTPILE_MUMBLE) voluntarily threw away so many people through its myraid "reorganizations" that it hardly mattered. Today, their stock is in the tank, and they haven't released anything imaginative in at least three years.
$(MUMBLE_SALTPILE_MUMBLE) isn't even the first company to do it. Those with longer memories and grey hairs will remember that Atari, back when it was owned by Warner Communications, absolutely forbade any author or artist credits for the games and software they published. Their position on this softened slightly when the easter egg in the 2600 VCS game Adventure became widely known, but it was this policy that was one of the primary motivations for a bunch of Atari people to jump ship and form Activision.
Schwab
Re:Homegrown reactors are evil.
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Duct Tape
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The first uncontrolled nuclear reaction ever (1942)...had to be stopped by a guy running up with an ax.
No no, that was a controlled reaction. The first uncontrolled reaction was at the top of a tower in the middle of the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico.
The second uncontrolled reaction was a few thousand feet over Hiroshima, Japan.
How many times have you walked by a building with two people picketing and not paid attention to why they were picketing? It seems as though many people don't care about an issue until it effects them.
Y'know, there's a perfectly oily little Ford auto dealership near where I live, and for several weeks last year, a number of people were picketing it, apparently on strike or some such. Ordinarily, as the previous poster says, I would ignore it and carry on with my own business, but I was suddenly seized with curiosity, and stopped to talk to one of them.
"You guys have been here for some time," I said.
"Yeah, it's been a while," he replied.
"So what's the issue here?" I asked. "Why are you picketing?"
"We're not allowed to say."
"...Beg pardon?" I asked, incredulous.
"We're not allowed to say. We'll get in trouble if we do."
After probing further, I managed to "read between the lines" and discovered the dealership in question had hired non-union workers. But the idea that the pickets were prohibited from discussing their grievance struck me as Just Plain Odd. I didn't inquire as to where this edict had come from.
The world does not appear to be operating within rational parameters. Where's the reset button?
The issue here isn't Microsoft vs Linux, it is PRIVATE PROPERTY. You can give away Linux CD's all you want on PUBLIC property but once you step onto my place of business then I'm going to kick you out.
...Except that the private property involved wasn't Microsoft's, it was the hotel's/convention center's.
Were there signs up in or leading to the area in question saying, "No admittance without XP badge?" The story does not say.
Personally, I think it would have been a far greater coup if the alleged "gatecrashers" had purchased valid XP event badges expressly for the purpose of getting in and handing out Linux discs. Unless there was language in the "contract" accompanying badge purchase that you couldn't promote alternatives to Microsoft products, Microsoft would have had very little to say on the matter.
gl_texturemode GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR;bind r gl_texturemode GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST;
In case you're curious, that's the switch command necessary for the OpenGL wallhack that's freely available.
How the heck is that supposed to work? gl_texturemode simply sets the mipmapping mode for textured polygons. Unless there's a universal bug in OpenGL implementations (seems unlikely to me), simply switching mipmapping modes isn't going to make polygons transparent or turn wireframe. At best, it'll increase your frame rate slightly, depending on your graphics card (GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST reads texels from only one mip level, which saves you a read cycle over GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR, which reads from two mip levels).
Not being a Q3A player (I won't buy a copy until they remove the copy control measures), I can't speak directly to Q3A latency in general or his server in particular. However, having been a QuakeWorld addict for several years now, I have several opinions on what contributes to overall quality of game play.
First off, let me repeat as others have above that being an LPB (Low-Ping Bastard) does not assure you victory against all comers. I have been well and truly thorked by players sporting 200+ pings. I am also a decisively mediocre player.
While round-trip time to the server ("ping") is important, I find the game's rate to be just as important. rate is the amount of bandwidth your client will consume, and defaults to 2500 (bytes per second) for QuakeWorld. This limits how much game state can be updated at any given time. Lower rates mean less game state data and reduced "fluidity" of game play. So even if your ping is <20ms, a rate of 2500 gives you incredibly choppy updates. Thus, if you have a high-bandwidth connection (DSL, cable modem, OC3), the first thing you should do is crank your rate. I keep mine set at 8000, which gives me much smoother, much more fluid display. I could set my rate to 10000 since I have high-bandwidth SDSL, but I keep it down a bit as a courtesy to server operators so as not take more bandwidth from the server than I need.
Your rate setting should not exceed the total bandwidth available on your net connection. Thus, setting your rate to 6000 on a 56k modem will actually make things worse. Games with the rate setting include Quake, QuakeWorld, Quake2, Quake-3 Arena, HalfLife, CounterStrike, and all other Quake engine-derived games. Non-Quake engine-derived games also have this kind of setting, but they all call it something else.
Another big source of latency can be your ISP and their Quality Of Service metric. I used to have 416K SDSL through Best/Verio before Northpoint cratered. I have since switched to Speakeasy 1.1M SDSL, who partners with Covad. With Best/Verio, the best pings I saw were in the 20-25 ms range. Occasionally I would get an 18. When I switched to Speakeasy, I naturally assumed that the higher bandwidth would yield even lower pings. However, this has not happened. After some study with traceroute, it's my suspicion that Speakeasy's routers are either overloaded or configured sub-optimally. I posted my thumbnail analysis to Speakeasy's discussion fora (mine's the last post in the thread), but haven't received any response yet.
Another way the network can hose your gameplay is by dropping packets. Speakeasy seems a little more willing to drop the odd packet than was Best/Verio. However, Best/Verio had a router in their network that would occasionally go apesh*t and drop all packets for about 90 seconds, which is long enough to get you disconnected from any server.
Games seem particularly vulnerable to dropped packets. QuakeWorld is the only game that seems to handle this issue robustly, patiently waiting to re-sync with the server. Nearly every other network game I've played -- Quake2, Unreal Tournament, HalfLife -- will never re-synchronize, and you have to reconnect. Serious Sam is especially bad in this regard (I'm willing to cut Croteam some slack since this is their first product, but I hope they fix it soon).
BTW, most of the Quake engine-based games have a little network diagnostic tool called netgraph, which shows you a realtime scrolling graph of your network latency, including dropped packets, corrupted packets, and overflow packets. When the game play starts to suck, you can pop this up and get an idea of what the cause is.
Finally, if there are any FPS gods in the SF Bay Area who would like to help me graduate from frustratingly mediocre player to good-enough-not-to-embarrass-myself player, I'd appreciate hearing from you.
Previous posters have already made the point that the per-gigabyte cost of this new IOmega drive is preposterously high. But if compact, removable media is what you need, may I humbly suggest you look at the Castlewood ORB?
I have one of their external SCSI units. The drive is also available in EIDE, USB and IEEE 1394 (Firewire) flavors. I have five platters, which I use to hold mostly games. The drive works flawlessly with Linux and BeOS, and only exhibits one minor annoyance under Windows (which is probably not Castlewood's fault; Windows doesn't completely flush the desktop's caches when ejecting a platter). The drive seems a bit slow at writing data. This may be because I have the drive configured for highest reliability rather than speed. Though I haven't subjected it to especially hard use, I have yet to suffer any data loss. The media cost is almost reasonable at $30 for 2.2 Gigs.
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Castlewood other than as a satisfied customer.
As a decisively mediocre FPS player, I have mixed feelings about such tools in the hands of the Ethically Challenged. I'd love to have such tools available, so long as we agree not to use them when playing "for keeps".
I spectate a lot, in the hopes of learning new moves that might help me rise beyond mediocre. But sometimes I spectate a server just as eye candy. For occasions like that, having a wireframe rendering mode would be cool, as I could immediately spot where the most action was and fly on over there.
But let's assume there's a cheating player on the server, with X-Ray vision, super speed (Quakeworld time hack), and autoaim. You could decide to change your personal goals. Rather than best your opponent on frag count, you could instead choose to constrain his frag count by becoming difficult to find. Run around, staying out of direct line of sight. Though he may be able to see through walls, he can't shoot you through walls (unless you're playing HalfLife with that weird energy gun). Stay out of his sights and see how long you can keep him from hitting the server's fraglimit. He may say, "Ha ha, I totally 0wn3d you, 20 frags to zero!", but you get to say, "Yeah, but it took you 45 minutes to do it, nimrod."
Take it from me: Getting thorked is No Fun. But if you decide on a new set of victory conditions for yourself, you can still have some fun.
Ultimately, as Carmack the Magnificent observed, there can be no perfect solution here. The only way you can be "sure" is if you're in an environment where every player's machine is verified as trustworthy by yourself or a trusted third party. Therefore, unless you're in such an environment, don't play for money.
(I'm reminded of a HalfLife TeamFortress Classic server, named Yiffy Rabid Foxies, where the admins will mess with you as you play (such as raining grenades down on you wherever you walk). Believe it or not, it's actually kinda fun in its own way.)
Precisely, and this is ostensibly what the rendering option is for. It's a tremendously useful debugging tool for rendering engine writers and map makers to see if the bits of geometry they thought they were optimizing away are in fact getting chopped out.
We should all demand a system where everybody is guaranteed income property, an estate if you will. There is plenty for everybody and it would eliminate exploitation/slavery.
It's about here that you lost my sympathy.
One of the core values of Western Culture is: If you work hard and work well, you will be rewarded. This isn't written down anywhere per se. It's a natural consequence of our own primal, individual selfishness. "Hey! That guy's doing great work and making my life better. I'd better be nice to him so he'll stick around and do more of it." Why bother to work well at all? Again, primal instincts: To distinguish ourselves among the group; to compete for Alpha status; to attract a mate.
It's not immediately clear how your "guaranteed income property" ties into these drives.
You are correct when you say the age of "property" is coming to an end. Computers are the herald, announcing the coming of replicators and nanotech. Once that happens, all property will become as infinitely replicable and proliferable as computer data is today (with the exception of real estate). And you are also correct when you say that the only way to maintain the status quo is to impose an oppressive totalitarian regime.
Where we part ways is what to replace it with. It may be that we, as a species, are genetically compelled to be territorial about things, even when it doesn't matter. If that's the case, we better brush up on the NewSpeak right now, doubleplus quick.
If, however, we can get past that, it's my belief we will enter an age where the chief "currency" will be a person's reputation. That reputation will be what draws people to you, petitioning for your skills/expertise to create/design/build new things. If money still exists, it will be used to pay not for an artisan's artifacts, but for their time (which, even in an age of replicators or matter compilers, cannot be duplicated).
There is a downside to this "utopia", of course. Because replicators will be ubiquitous, people will work only when they want to. It will be interesting to see what happens to the human animal when we no longer need to do anything.
Slashdot Mirror
So, once again, Microsoft speaks, and millions of Open Source/Free Software geeks listen in rapt attention, then spend the next few days bitching about what was said.
Guys (and gals), listen to me: When you're paying attention to Mundie or Ballmer or Gates, and then bitching about how evil they are... You're not writing code.
Can't you see? By holding these "talks" and issuing press releases, Microsoft's intent is to distract you from writing code!
All that time you spent writing up a self-righteously indignant post to Slashdot, the time you spent checking your user profile to see if anyone replied to it or modded it up, that time you spent writing counter-replies, all that time you could have spent writing code is now lost. (And yes, by writing this post, I myself am guilty of that offense.)
Look, Microsoft's "Shared Source" initiative has two primary purposes: To throw the Open Source/Free Software advocates into disarray, and to keep the uninitiated from getting involved with Open Source/Free Software in the first place. The purpose behind this is to forestall any competition to Microsoft's .NET buildout, which is going to require a gargantuan engineering effort. Microsoft will have to write every line of code themselves, whereas a potential competitor may choose to leverage Open Source/Free Software works to get to market quicker. So naturally, Microsoft wants to scare as many people as possible away from OS/FS. The "Shared Source" ploy also theoretically gets them free debugging expertise, a job they have traditionally been unable or unwilling to do themselves.
My advice (which is worth every cent you paid for it): Write code. Ignore them and write some code.
I name SourceForce since it's one of the best known, but there's no reason you can't go to SunSite... er, MetaLab... er, iBiblio. Or the FSF's projects pages. Or any other site hosting Open Source/Free Software works.
There are thousands of pieces of software out there needing work. Some are sexier than others. Some are dull but crucial tools or pieces of infrastructure. Some don't exist at all, except in your imagination. Pick one.
Some consider the lack of a feature to be a bug, so add a feature if you like. Either way, it'll improve the quality of the project.
Microsoft is worried because a lot of the Open Source/Free Software alternatives are better than their own stuff. Where OS/FS alternatives fall short, they are rapidly catching up. Microsoft can make all the sophomoric remarks it wants about the GPL and Open Source/Free Software ("If you touch the GPL, your intellectual property will get cooties! Ooo, icky!"). But at the end of the day, the reliability and quality of OS/FS projects will be the compelling factor that causes users, both business and casual, to migrate over to our stuff. And that will happen only if the work is done to make the OS/FS projects better.
Personally, I can think of no more direct or effective rebuke to Mundie's "talk" than an audience full of people with laptops and 802.11b cards, deliberately and maliciously fixing bugs at him.
Jump on SourceForge. Pick a project. Fix a bug.
And then when you've checked in your fix, post about it here, so everyone can see the progress being made.
Back to the grind,
Schwab
Which simply serves as further evidence that Microsoft botched it. Nowhere is it written that libc needs to be implemented as a single entity. As an example, you could have a "veneer" link library (conveniently named libc) which offers up all the libc functions, but implements none of them. Instead, it re-binds to sub-DLLs which implement libc operations separated according to general functionality (one DLL for string operations, another for file operations, another for printf() and friends, etc.). Thus, your program will only consume memory for the functions it's actually using.
This is not rocket science. Hell, it's not even computer science. It's just good, solid, clear thinking.
Schwab
Ha ha, very ha. Microsoft "invented" shared code very late in the game, well after Amiga and Mac, and probably after Sun as well. The .so extension on UNIX systems canonically means "Shared Object".
Besides, there's no legitimate reason the Windows shell DLLs couldn't themselves have dynamically linked against a libc DLL -- which itself could then be shared amongst all apps -- rather than exporting incompatible substitutes.
And no, libc is not too large/monolithic to make this work in a 4M system. The only difficult part is getting the functions and data that rely on global state (printf(), errno, et al) to work. But strcpy() is stateless, and as such would drop into a DLL trivially. That Microsoft screwed up something so agonizingly basic I feel speaks volumes about their, "modern software engineering practices."
Schwab
Well, if you want to be pedantic, then yes, I'll concede that the GPL conditions under which you can make and distribute copies does constitute a "constraint" on that particular form of use.
However, I hope you would likewise concede that shrinkwrap "agreements" are considerably more onerous than the GPL:
Even if, as a software consumer, copying and redistribution are important to you, the GPL is vastly better than commercial shrinkwrap "agreements". And it's cheaper, too!
Schwab
This is absolutely fantastic news. I find it astonishing that any court would consider these so-called "contracts" valid at all, but we have to take our victories where we can. This could be "camel's nose in the tent" that will lead to the invalidation of all shrinkwrap and clickwrap "agreements". For an explanation of why shrinkwrap agreements should not be allowed to exist, see my five-year-old editorial on the subject.
Those who worry that this decision may weaken the GPL, or any other Open Source/Free Software license, need not fear. Shrinkwrap "agreements" purport to constrain your right to use the software, whereas the GPL simply constrains your ability to copy and redistribute the software. In other words:
Which one is the product of a less childish mind is left as an exercise for the reader.
The effect of striking down a shrinkwrap "agreement" would be that the default terms of copyright law would apply, which is that you would still be free to use your software, and you still wouldn't be allowed to make copies of it, but all the other "rights" the vendor granted themselves would vanish. This means that the spyware the vendor installed on your machine without your consent would now be actionable.
The effect of striking down the GPL would be that you'd still be able to use your copy of the software but, legally, you wouldn't be entitled to make and distribute copies anymore. However, the practical effect would likely be nil. By releasing under the GPL, the authors are representing that they won't go after you if make and distribute copies of the source. It is likely they would continue to make that representation even absent an enforceable GPL. And they would still have the right to go after people who distribute binaries absent source (since binaries are considered a protected derivative work). That means Linus could still go after Microsoft -- and, to be fair, any other organization -- that tried to loot Linux.
All in all, this decision is a good thing for consumers and users everywhere.
Schwab
I'm about the fall into the classic Slashdot trap of offering armchair legal advice, but hey, everyone else is doing it.
Change the name of KIllustrator. While the name 'KIllustrator' may be defensible, it will be hideously costly to do so. Change it.
Other than that, I don't see the authors/University as obliged to do anything else. I hope German law isn't too different from US law in this respect. Absent a court judgment to the contrary, the legal fees incurred for drafting the threatening letter are Adobe's responsibility, not the victim's.
Under no circumstances should the author or University turn over a list of users (assuming such a thing exists). They have absolutely no call to make that demand.
Schwab
I've heard from a reliable source that GnuPG has compatibility issues with PGP. Messages signed/encrypted by one aren't always correctly handled by the other.
Anyone know if there's an issue here, and what it actually is?
Schwab
Computer games, in terms of raw dollars, are a bigger industry that motion pictures. There's little question that, though Wolfenstein-3D, Doom, and Quake, John Carmack is personally responsible for much of this success, and is a celebrity in his own right.
So my dumb question to John is: Have you ever been invited on the Dave Letterman Show? Come to that, has any major figure in computers ever been on Letterman (or Leno)? (Bill Gates doesn't count.)
Schwab
Naturally, the direct marketers are trying to control the debate by controlling the terminology, harping on the (deceptive) meme: Advertising is Speech.
I offer a counter-meme: Advertising is Pollution.
What is pollution? It's stuff that's introduced into an environment where it doesn't belong or isn't wanted.
Empty beer cans don't belong in the street. They interfere with the flow of traffic. They are an eyesore. It reduces the street's utility by getting in the way of where you want or need to go. They are also a health and safety hazard. Even if there weren't laws against littering in the street, social forces would operate to compel people to not litter. It is, as best, impolite; at worst, monsterously destructive to the environment and quality of life.
Advertising is nearly identical. It interferes with the normal flow of information. It's an eyesore. It reduces the utility of the info-sphere by interposing itself between you and what you want or need to know. It is also intentionally deceptive. Yet purveyors of advertising portray themselves as a necessary, indispensible part of modern captialist society, when in fact what they're doing is willfully polluting the info-sphere with stuff they know isn't wanted by anyone.
Tell me: How is cold-calling me at dinnertime trying to convince me to switch long-distance carriers a benefit to my household, the community, and society as a whole? How is stuffing my snailmail box with pulp paper coupons offering 3% discounts on crap I've never tried a good thing for me? How many lovely trees have been killed to print and mail this garbage which, in my case, goes straight into the recycling bin, unread? Why should I support wasting bandwidth to distribute deceptive scams and snakeoil, bandwidth that I could be using to lose at Quake and HalfLife?
Just as there are appropriate places for empty beer cans, there are appropriate places for Internet advertising. The social order of the Internet has unequivocally decided that advertising is pollution, and when it appears in unsanctioned areas, it will not tolerated. Period.
You have a right to speak. You have no right to pollute. Get over it.
Schwab
No, that's not correct.
As an experiment, try this:
volatile float point_one, point_seven;
point_one = 0.1;
point_seven = point_one + point_one + point_one + point_one + point_one + point_one + point_one;
printf ("point_seven %s 0.7\n", point_seven == 0.7 ? "equal to" : "not equal to");
The program will print "not equal to", because of accumulated rounding errors in the LSBs of the float. This kind of miniscule inaccuracy is unavoidable when converting from base 10 to base 2, and it's absolutely unacceptable in heavyweight financial software. So the previous poster's question is quite valid.
What you really want for financial apps is string-based (bignum) or BCD (binary-coded decimal) math routines, where addition and subtraction always yield precise results. Intuit/Quicken has such math routines, refined and bullet-proofed over many years, which is one reason they have such a good reputation among financial institutions.
For personal finance, the requirements are less stringent. "Insignificant" rounding errors (are supposed to) get chopped before the user ever sees them. But bignum/BCD arithmetic prevents them from ever appearing in the first place, completely eliminating them as a possible source of error.
Actually, I may as well make that my interview question: Since the GnuCash engine is supposed to be general-purpose, what steps have been taken to assure potential big-ticket users that the unavoidable rounding errors present in binary floating point math will never have an unexpected effect on GnuCash's results?
Schwab
(This is really oblique, but if, by chance, there's a scene on the roof of the Winter Garden Theater at Times Square; and if, by chance, Duke blows away a NPC in a Cat costume, then:)
"That musical didn't make any sense, anyway."
Schwab
Wuss. The following, though not scrupulously perfect, is from memory.
KING: Make sure the prince doesn't leave this room until I come and get him. ...Right?
GUARD: Not to leave the room, even if you come and get him.
KING: No no, until I come and get him.
GUARD: Until you come and get him, we're not to enter the room.
KING: No no. You stay in the room, and make sure he doesn't leave.
GUARD: And you'll come and get him.
KING: Right.
GUARD: We're not to do anything apart from just stop him entering the room.
KING: No no, leaving the room.
GUARD: Leaving the room, yes.
KING: Got it?
GUARD: Oh! Oh, if we... er, if he... Uh...
KING: Look, it's quite simple.
GUARD: Er...
KING: You two just stay here, and make sure he doesn't leave. Got it?
GUARD: Oh, I remember. Er, can he leave the room with us?
KING: No, I want you to keep him in here, and make sure...
GUARD: Oh, we'll keep him in here, obviously. But if he had to leave, and we were with him...
KING: No, just keep him in here...
GUARD: Until you or anyone else...
KING: No, not anyone else, just me...
GUARD: Just you...
KING: Get back.
GUARD: Get back.
KING:
GUARD: Right, we'll stay here until you get back.
KING: And make sure he doesn't leave.
GUARD: Hmm?
KING: Make sure he doesn't leave.
GUARD: The prince?
KING: Yes! Make sure he...
GUARD: Oh! I'm sorry, I thought you meant him. (indicates other guard) Y'know it seemed a bit daft me having to guard him when he's a guard.
KING: Is that clear?
GUARD: Oh, quite clear, no problems.
[ KING turns to leave; GUARDS move to follow. ]
KING: Where are you going?
GUARD: We're coming with you.
KING: No, I want you to stay here, and make sure he doesn't leave!
GUARD: Oh, I see. Right.
Schwab
Shameless show-off
"Without Zinc Oxide, you wouldn't have that bar of soap. <*ding*>
"The dish towels you use every day. <*ding*>
"Your toaster. <*ding*>
"That brassiere you're wearing. <*ding*>
"Your kitchen sink. <*ding*>
"Metal hooks. <*ding*>
"The heat control on your stove." <*ding*>
(etc., etc., etc., from The Kentucky Fried Movie.)
Schwab
Don't be too sure about that.
A former colleague used to be one of the sysadmins at one of the -- if not the -- largest sexually explicit server farms in the world (they're in Seattle; wish I could remember the name). These guys can assemble any kind of explicit site you want, filled to the brim with pictures, in under 24 hours. These guys apparently generate over two gigabytes a day just in server logs.
These guys have a database. A massive database. In this database is every picture on their server farm, with information on who the copyright holder is, who the photographer is, who the subjects are and their ages, when it was taken, how many times it's been viewed and from where, how much money has been charged to view it, etc. etc. etc. etc.
If an image previously thought to be public domain or otherwise unencumbered turns out to be copyrighted, they have the logs and database records to make sure they receive back-royalties.
There's a real industry here. Despite it's "unsavory" nature to the general public, any decentralized distribution of their "property" in noticable volumes will get you smacked down. (Due to rapid article expiration and non-existent searching capabilities, USENET does not constitute noticable volumes.)
BTW, most of the people who stand to lose Real Money(TM) in the sexually explicit image industry have a very different way of doing business. They don't send threatening letters. They don't sue you. They just come 'round in the dead of night and break your knees.
Schwab
Internet protocol is Internet protocol, no matter what platform is spitting out the bits. Thus, you don't need "cooperation" among the console vendors to achieve compatibility. As long as the publisher hasn't made gratuitous changes to the game's protocol when porting to different platforms, it should all Just Work. It's therefore an issue amongst game publishers, not the console vendors.
The only thing I can think of that might be an issue is if what they're really trying to build is a "portal-based" gaming infrastructure, where you have to log into a Web page before you can launch the game proper (rather like Microsoft's Gaming Zone). This is, of course, nonsense, as has been proved by Quake. While a central catalog of running game servers is nice, you don't need a central server arbitrating gaming sessions; the server in question can handle it all. And, frankly, it's none of Nintendo's/Sega's/Microsoft's damn business which game I'm playing right now, and with whom.
What am I missing here?
Schwab
Those who claim this kind of thing is peculiar to Japanese culture are misinformed. In fact, I would suspect it to be typical in the computer game industry. Computer game positions typically pay 10-20% less than "traditional" IT positions. It's also a "hit-based" industry. Computer games have become so ruinously expensive to produce that you either get filthy rich with a monster hit (like HalfLife), or you find yourself bankrupt when you discover your vision doesn't resonate with the market (like Daikatana).
I have some personal experience with this kind of "forced anonymization". I used to work for $(MUMBLE_SALTPILE_MUMBLE) in Redwood City, CA, which at that time was a game console company. One of the products being internally developed was a saved game file manipulator which would let you manage the very limited battery-backed RAM for storing saved games. Naturally, such a program does not consume a noticeable fraction of a CD-ROM, so the author walked around the office with a video camera saying Hi to various employees, compressed it, and put it on the CD-ROM as an easter egg.
Shortly before going gold, our corporate counsel ordered the video deleted from the CD. The reason? Competitors might see the video and recruit our people away.
The irony is that $(MUMBLE_SALTPILE_MUMBLE) voluntarily threw away so many people through its myraid "reorganizations" that it hardly mattered. Today, their stock is in the tank, and they haven't released anything imaginative in at least three years.
$(MUMBLE_SALTPILE_MUMBLE) isn't even the first company to do it. Those with longer memories and grey hairs will remember that Atari, back when it was owned by Warner Communications, absolutely forbade any author or artist credits for the games and software they published. Their position on this softened slightly when the easter egg in the 2600 VCS game Adventure became widely known, but it was this policy that was one of the primary motivations for a bunch of Atari people to jump ship and form Activision.
Schwab
No no, that was a controlled reaction. The first uncontrolled reaction was at the top of a tower in the middle of the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico.
The second uncontrolled reaction was a few thousand feet over Hiroshima, Japan.
Schwab
Y'know, there's a perfectly oily little Ford auto dealership near where I live, and for several weeks last year, a number of people were picketing it, apparently on strike or some such. Ordinarily, as the previous poster says, I would ignore it and carry on with my own business, but I was suddenly seized with curiosity, and stopped to talk to one of them.
"You guys have been here for some time," I said.
"Yeah, it's been a while," he replied.
"So what's the issue here?" I asked. "Why are you picketing?"
"We're not allowed to say."
"...Beg pardon?" I asked, incredulous.
"We're not allowed to say. We'll get in trouble if we do."
After probing further, I managed to "read between the lines" and discovered the dealership in question had hired non-union workers. But the idea that the pickets were prohibited from discussing their grievance struck me as Just Plain Odd. I didn't inquire as to where this edict had come from.
The world does not appear to be operating within rational parameters. Where's the reset button?
Schwab
...Except that the private property involved wasn't Microsoft's, it was the hotel's/convention center's.
Were there signs up in or leading to the area in question saying, "No admittance without XP badge?" The story does not say.
Personally, I think it would have been a far greater coup if the alleged "gatecrashers" had purchased valid XP event badges expressly for the purpose of getting in and handing out Linux discs. Unless there was language in the "contract" accompanying badge purchase that you couldn't promote alternatives to Microsoft products, Microsoft would have had very little to say on the matter.
Schwab
How the heck is that supposed to work? gl_texturemode simply sets the mipmapping mode for textured polygons. Unless there's a universal bug in OpenGL implementations (seems unlikely to me), simply switching mipmapping modes isn't going to make polygons transparent or turn wireframe. At best, it'll increase your frame rate slightly, depending on your graphics card (GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST reads texels from only one mip level, which saves you a read cycle over GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR, which reads from two mip levels).
What's really going on here?
Schwab
Not being a Q3A player (I won't buy a copy until they remove the copy control measures), I can't speak directly to Q3A latency in general or his server in particular. However, having been a QuakeWorld addict for several years now, I have several opinions on what contributes to overall quality of game play.
First off, let me repeat as others have above that being an LPB (Low-Ping Bastard) does not assure you victory against all comers. I have been well and truly thorked by players sporting 200+ pings. I am also a decisively mediocre player.
While round-trip time to the server ("ping") is important, I find the game's rate to be just as important. rate is the amount of bandwidth your client will consume, and defaults to 2500 (bytes per second) for QuakeWorld. This limits how much game state can be updated at any given time. Lower rates mean less game state data and reduced "fluidity" of game play. So even if your ping is <20ms, a rate of 2500 gives you incredibly choppy updates. Thus, if you have a high-bandwidth connection (DSL, cable modem, OC3), the first thing you should do is crank your rate. I keep mine set at 8000, which gives me much smoother, much more fluid display. I could set my rate to 10000 since I have high-bandwidth SDSL, but I keep it down a bit as a courtesy to server operators so as not take more bandwidth from the server than I need.
Your rate setting should not exceed the total bandwidth available on your net connection. Thus, setting your rate to 6000 on a 56k modem will actually make things worse. Games with the rate setting include Quake, QuakeWorld, Quake2, Quake-3 Arena, HalfLife, CounterStrike, and all other Quake engine-derived games. Non-Quake engine-derived games also have this kind of setting, but they all call it something else.
Another big source of latency can be your ISP and their Quality Of Service metric. I used to have 416K SDSL through Best/Verio before Northpoint cratered. I have since switched to Speakeasy 1.1M SDSL, who partners with Covad. With Best/Verio, the best pings I saw were in the 20-25 ms range. Occasionally I would get an 18. When I switched to Speakeasy, I naturally assumed that the higher bandwidth would yield even lower pings. However, this has not happened. After some study with traceroute, it's my suspicion that Speakeasy's routers are either overloaded or configured sub-optimally. I posted my thumbnail analysis to Speakeasy's discussion fora (mine's the last post in the thread), but haven't received any response yet.
Another way the network can hose your gameplay is by dropping packets. Speakeasy seems a little more willing to drop the odd packet than was Best/Verio. However, Best/Verio had a router in their network that would occasionally go apesh*t and drop all packets for about 90 seconds, which is long enough to get you disconnected from any server.
Games seem particularly vulnerable to dropped packets. QuakeWorld is the only game that seems to handle this issue robustly, patiently waiting to re-sync with the server. Nearly every other network game I've played -- Quake2, Unreal Tournament, HalfLife -- will never re-synchronize, and you have to reconnect. Serious Sam is especially bad in this regard (I'm willing to cut Croteam some slack since this is their first product, but I hope they fix it soon).
BTW, most of the Quake engine-based games have a little network diagnostic tool called netgraph, which shows you a realtime scrolling graph of your network latency, including dropped packets, corrupted packets, and overflow packets. When the game play starts to suck, you can pop this up and get an idea of what the cause is.
Finally, if there are any FPS gods in the SF Bay Area who would like to help me graduate from frustratingly mediocre player to good-enough-not-to-embarrass-myself player, I'd appreciate hearing from you.
Schwab
Previous posters have already made the point that the per-gigabyte cost of this new IOmega drive is preposterously high. But if compact, removable media is what you need, may I humbly suggest you look at the Castlewood ORB?
I have one of their external SCSI units. The drive is also available in EIDE, USB and IEEE 1394 (Firewire) flavors. I have five platters, which I use to hold mostly games. The drive works flawlessly with Linux and BeOS, and only exhibits one minor annoyance under Windows (which is probably not Castlewood's fault; Windows doesn't completely flush the desktop's caches when ejecting a platter). The drive seems a bit slow at writing data. This may be because I have the drive configured for highest reliability rather than speed. Though I haven't subjected it to especially hard use, I have yet to suffer any data loss. The media cost is almost reasonable at $30 for 2.2 Gigs.
Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Castlewood other than as a satisfied customer.
Schwab
As a decisively mediocre FPS player, I have mixed feelings about such tools in the hands of the Ethically Challenged. I'd love to have such tools available, so long as we agree not to use them when playing "for keeps".
I spectate a lot, in the hopes of learning new moves that might help me rise beyond mediocre. But sometimes I spectate a server just as eye candy. For occasions like that, having a wireframe rendering mode would be cool, as I could immediately spot where the most action was and fly on over there.
But let's assume there's a cheating player on the server, with X-Ray vision, super speed (Quakeworld time hack), and autoaim. You could decide to change your personal goals. Rather than best your opponent on frag count, you could instead choose to constrain his frag count by becoming difficult to find. Run around, staying out of direct line of sight. Though he may be able to see through walls, he can't shoot you through walls (unless you're playing HalfLife with that weird energy gun). Stay out of his sights and see how long you can keep him from hitting the server's fraglimit. He may say, "Ha ha, I totally 0wn3d you, 20 frags to zero!", but you get to say, "Yeah, but it took you 45 minutes to do it, nimrod."
Take it from me: Getting thorked is No Fun. But if you decide on a new set of victory conditions for yourself, you can still have some fun.
Ultimately, as Carmack the Magnificent observed, there can be no perfect solution here. The only way you can be "sure" is if you're in an environment where every player's machine is verified as trustworthy by yourself or a trusted third party. Therefore, unless you're in such an environment, don't play for money.
(I'm reminded of a HalfLife TeamFortress Classic server, named Yiffy Rabid Foxies, where the admins will mess with you as you play (such as raining grenades down on you wherever you walk). Believe it or not, it's actually kinda fun in its own way.)
Schwab
Precisely, and this is ostensibly what the rendering option is for. It's a tremendously useful debugging tool for rendering engine writers and map makers to see if the bits of geometry they thought they were optimizing away are in fact getting chopped out.
Schwab
It's about here that you lost my sympathy.
One of the core values of Western Culture is: If you work hard and work well, you will be rewarded. This isn't written down anywhere per se. It's a natural consequence of our own primal, individual selfishness. "Hey! That guy's doing great work and making my life better. I'd better be nice to him so he'll stick around and do more of it." Why bother to work well at all? Again, primal instincts: To distinguish ourselves among the group; to compete for Alpha status; to attract a mate.
It's not immediately clear how your "guaranteed income property" ties into these drives.
You are correct when you say the age of "property" is coming to an end. Computers are the herald, announcing the coming of replicators and nanotech. Once that happens, all property will become as infinitely replicable and proliferable as computer data is today (with the exception of real estate). And you are also correct when you say that the only way to maintain the status quo is to impose an oppressive totalitarian regime.
Where we part ways is what to replace it with. It may be that we, as a species, are genetically compelled to be territorial about things, even when it doesn't matter. If that's the case, we better brush up on the NewSpeak right now, doubleplus quick.
If, however, we can get past that, it's my belief we will enter an age where the chief "currency" will be a person's reputation. That reputation will be what draws people to you, petitioning for your skills/expertise to create/design/build new things. If money still exists, it will be used to pay not for an artisan's artifacts, but for their time (which, even in an age of replicators or matter compilers, cannot be duplicated).
There is a downside to this "utopia", of course. Because replicators will be ubiquitous, people will work only when they want to. It will be interesting to see what happens to the human animal when we no longer need to do anything.
Schwab