And if you add graphics, then it isn't Zork anymore. It becomes just another 3D puzzle/maze like Zelda or Starfox Adventures.
As someone who first played Zork in the early 80s on a campus Unix box, I thought Zork: High Inquisitor captured the
spirit of the original nicely. Which is more than the first two graphical adaptations did, admittedly. Still, it can be done.
But yeah, I think it really needs approaching from a different angle.
You can put any license you want on the binaries and still comply with the gpl as long as the sourcecode is available, compilable, and has no such restriction.
That doesn't sound right. From the GPLv2:
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
And then later:
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.
So, no. There are limits on what further restrictions you can impose, and restrictions on actually using the software would seem to be among those disallowed.
Of course, if you take the view that running the program is not covered by the licence, rather than specifically granted (the language seems ambiguous to me, but IANAL)
then we could get into the weird situation where you had the right to copy and distribute it, but not to run it. I'm sure someone will tell me why that isn't the case.
I don't think I want to eat Microsoft food. They'd probably try and make you ingest a device to analyse the contents of
stomach and radio the results back to Microsoft.
However, I take offense at RMS claiming his license is perfect and all others aren't truly free. I take offense at RMS blasting Mozilla, Google, Ubuntu, etc. for not being free by his definition. Mozilla, Google and Ubuntu are greatly furthering the causes of free software, and he treats them like villains.
You see, that seems to me to be fair enough. I'm not sure I share your outrage particularly, but at least you have a clear complaint that can be argued on its merits. Stick with that, and I
don't have a problem.
I've never said he succeeded in removing choice from me. I said he is attempting to remove choice from me
*sigh* Then perhaps you'd indulge me a little further and explain with clarity some of the specific choices
that will be denied to you should Richard succeed at his undoubtedly dastardly scheme. I'm interested in the
nature of the deprivation here, rather than the timing.
Honestly, how can you defend his statements that users should be deprived of choice simply by saying that he hasn't succeeded? What I'm objecting to are his statements.
Whoa. Slow down cowboy.
You haven't shown any such statements for me to defend.
You've yet to convince me that he is going to remove choice from anyone. (And if and when you do, you'll still need to convince me that you had some sort of right to that choice).
I don't believe I've anywhere stated that his so-far lack of success at this (or any) alleged offense is any sort of justification for anything.
As regards the third item, that's the second time you've misrepresented my point of view in this way. Last time I asked you to quote the
passage that lead you to draw that inference. So far you have not, so I'll ask you again: what did I write that sounded to you like
"I know Richard is stealing our rights, but that's OK because he hasn't done it yet?" Or indeed "... that's OK because "
There are several posts on his site where he proposes exactly that. He asks distros to remove choice from the user, and he asks Mozilla to remove choice from the user.
Citation needed, I think. RMS' writes a lot of stuff on a lot of sites. I'm not going to spend my time trying to guess which passages you find offensive
purely to support your point.
Except RMS claims DRM is evil, and the GPL to be some holy mandate.
True freedom is public domain
Maybe I misunderstood your point, but it certainly sounded like you intended that to mean "the only free software is public domain".
I have stated with clarity repeatedly that he has railed against distros which include "non-free" software, and Mozilla for allowing "non-free" extensions. He has called for them to eliminate this choice. He has said any user that doesn't run 100% GPL software isn't free.
Yes you have stated that repeatedly. The area where clarity is lacking is in how this takes away any choice from you personally. To say nothing of why you think you have a right to that choice. But first things first, we still haven't established that you're losing any choices as a result of Stallman's
talking to people.
What is Ubuntu listened to him and blocked all "non-free" software? For a while, they certainly made it harder to install what you want.
Putting you to inconvenience is not the same thing as removing your choices. And, frankly, I'm a little at a loss for what you'd propose here.
Would you remove the Ubuntu distro's right to listen to Richard and to take his advice if they feel it to be the right thing to do? Or would
you remove Richard's right to free speech lest he cause you some inconvenience? I don't think you're seriously advocating either, but I can't see
possible remedy that doesn't boil down to one of those two.
A moderator on the Ubuntu forums literally told me I should divorce my wife for having hardware without OSS drivers. That my friend, is zealotry.
Yes it is. And in case my position is unclear, I am not suggesting that zealotry is a good thing, and I agree that free software zealots do a lot of harm to the movement.
But none of that restricted your choices, or removed your rights.
I advocated allowing each developer the freedom to choose the license that suits them, and allowing each user the freedom to decide what software they want to install
All of which they already have, and none of which Richard is proposing be removed. Do you begin to see why I think clarity may be lacking in some areas?
I don't want to advocate my opinions onto others. Let them make their own decisions.
And yet, that's exactly what you're doing here. You're saying "this is what I think is right and this is what I think is wrong, and this is what I think people should do". Which is all that Stallman is doing, and yet you criticise him in the strongest terms... for criticising others for doing
things of which he doesn't approve.
There is no essential difference between what you are doing here on this board, and what you find so reprehensible in Stallman. Do you not see that?
Look: I've read enough of your posts on Slashdot. You've never struck me as a troll or a hypocrite, and you've never given me reason to think you
unintelligent. But in this case, I can't help but think that you haven't thought this through properly.
So because he has made positive contributions, he is entitled to take away my freedom of choice?
How about you quote me the bit where I said that? Or even anything like it?
And we shouldn't be concerned?
I'll consider being concerned if you can explain with clarity what choices you feel
he is taking away from you.
Keep drinking the Kool-Aid.
Has it ever occurred to you that you're acting every bit as much the zealot
in your advocacy of the public domain as the people you decry for unthinking
adherence to the GPL? Could it be you've spent too long gazing into the abyss?
Exactly! Running copyright back to 5 years would be an all round good thing, certainly for the software industry. Making special provision to remove copyright from free software after five years would be Bad.
He has gone out of his way to try and use his stature to sway people like Mozilla
I believe he's entitled to do that. The reason he has such stature is that he has
worked hard and accomplished much.
But the fact remains that he wants to take away my rights, and is willing to try and do so.
The only right he's ever been interested in restricting is the right to freeload on other people's
hard work. And that remains purely on a voluntary basis by the people doing the work. Even the
would be freeloader still gets more rights than they would if the software was released commercially.
Are you suggesting we shouldn't be concerned that someone is trying to take away your rights until they are successful in doing so?
If by "taking away your rights" you mean passing laws, seizing property, having people imprisoned and/or tortured, then
yes, we should be concerned,
If by "taking away your rights" you mean talking to mozilla and trying to persuade to them make their software a little
less business-friendly, then no, I don't think we need be especially concerned.
I can appreciate that you don't agree with everything Stallman says - I don't either. And you're certainly entitled to
argue the opposing case should you wish. But trying to frame the argument in terms of Evil Richard Stealing All Our Rights
smacks a bit of the Straw Man. It seems to me that the only "rights" he wants to remove are ones you never had in the first place.
If can't be done both ways. Commercial software's copyright and GPL software's copyright uses the same law
Umm... from the rest of your comment, I'm guessing you mean that it can't be done without it being done both ways.
Because copyright that expires after 5 years does so in both cases.
Not trying to be a smart-alec here, just making sure I understand your point.
So when he attacks Mozilla for allowing users to install "non-free" extensions, and he berates them repeatedly,
saying they should remove choice from users, who exactly here is he respecting?
To be fair, he's offering his opinion here. It's not like he's trying to abuse legislation to
coerce uninvolved third parties.
I don't agree with everything Stallman says, but he's not exactly trampling anyone's choices
into the dirt here.
You are most correct to point that out and it is my sentiment as well. If a 5-year-old version of some software is worth commercial exploitation, then let them have it. Fair is fair
As long as it works both ways, of course. If a commercial work is over five years old, then it too should pass into the public domain.
As long as that's agreed, then yeah: fair is fair.
Without that, what you propose is a charter to plunder free software without offering anything in return.
The question, which you ignored, is whether driving is a right.
[ different poster here, jumping in]
I think the original point, way up in the thread, was framed poorly. Clearly, we have no "rights" at all, save those that by convention, we grant ourselves. If you look at in those terms, the question becomes not do we have a right to Internet access? but rather should we grant ourselves a right to Internet access?. There may well be a case to be made for granting such a right, but I'll concede that thus far no-one has made it in a particularly convincing manner.
That aside, I feel the GP has nevertheless hit at the crux of the matter. The problem here is not so much that a company is disconnecting
its clients. The problem is that a service is being removed without warning, and without any oversight or any requirement to show reasonable cause.
Consider a hypothetical situation: you go down to the pub one evening for a pint of beer. When you get there, you are accosted by a loud, obnoxious drunk. Despite your best efforts, an argument ensues.
So far, this is a scene that plays in bars across the world, night after night after night. But if it turns out that your drunken adversary was highly placed in Kingston Telecommunications, then he might well wake up deciding that you're just the sort of scumbag to indulge filesharing. Having reached this conclusion, he voices his suspicions and the next thing you know, you are without internet access.
At this point,
If you have a home business that relies on the Internet,
then your only option is to go to their offices and confess to a crime you did not commit, leaving yourself open to possible future legal action from various rights holding groups. *End of hypothetical scenario*
Now, I'm not suggesting that this has happened. However, it seems to be that there is nevertheless an unfair power imbalance here, and I don't think any system that allows such abuses is desirable.
Furthermore, while the case may not be made that Internet access is a right,
I believe we should have a right not to be subject to arbitrary
abuse when our livelihood may be on the line. I think this is the essence of the original argument.
Netscape died because the developers decided to take several years to rewrite the whole thing
Mmmm, yes, but that was after IE was bundled in with Windows. Netscape was bleeding money by then, and ready to try something desperate.
I'll grant that the full rewrite was a strategic error, but the damage had already been done by then.
Yes, I WAS THERE
Really? Where. precisely? Microsoft? Pity you weren't around to testify during the anti-trust trials.
And for the record, I'm old enough to remember it all happening as well, so I'm
no more impressed by your age and your block caps than I was by your bluster and sarcasm.
You can change the subject all you want, but these are the facts of the matter
On Bizzarro world, maybe.
Let's try this again:
If you decide to cite any evidence to support your rather odd version of events,
then we can probably continue this discussion.
If not, then I'll have to assume that you don't have anything further to add to the debate,
in which case I'll just leave you to play on your own.
Either way, I hope the weather is nice in whatever parallel universe you happen to be inhabiting.
Would you please care to address the point, or is your entire world view based on changing the subject?
So what? You're trying to tell me that you know more about it than a bunch of guys who were there at the time,
who worked for Microsoft, and who commited their opinions on the subject to writing. And I'm
the one refusing to address the point? Really?
Remind me: who's the zealot here again?
Why is it that Firefox is #1 in many countries?
Why is it that Opera is #1 in many countries?
Basically and fundamentally because IE5 was such a monumental pile of crap, and because MS rested on their laurels and
refused to update the damn thing once they thought the browser war was won. IE earned such a bad reputation that people
are now willing to download and use a new browser. This wasn't the case in 1995 when IE was the new kid on the block.
There's also the question of business models. Netscape was shareware. It depended on people buying the product. That worked
surprising well while MS were selling IE as a separate shrink wrap product, and very poorly once there was a browser
bundled with the O/S. Neither Firefox nor Opera have that problem.
When the shareware income dried up, Netscape did try to switch to a model like Opera's early ad-driven
approach, but they were rather heavy handed about it, and that's when Netscape started to suck.
What is obvious is that the success if Internet Explorer had nothing to do with bundling but instead had to do with something else
Gee, Jim Alchin didn't think so. Bill Gates didn't think so. Paul Maritz didn't think so when he threatened to cut off Netscape's "air supply".
The court that found Microsoft guilty of abusing its monopoly position didn't think so.
Look: you're arguing contrary to the written record here. If you really think you have a point, you'll need to
produce something more than sarcasm and bluster to back it up. Otherwise, you're just going to make yourself
look silly.
Whoops, I messed up the Alchin quote - didn't spot the angle bracket. This is how it should have read:
"Pitting browser against browser is hard since Netscape has 80% marketshare and we have <20%... I am convinced we have to use Windows-this is the one thing they don't have..."
--Former Microsoft Vice President James Allchin in an internal memo
Standards compliance is a reasonable way of evaluating the how "good" one piece of software is in comparison with another.
Not the only possible criteria to be sure, but probably better than the notion so beloved of MS apologists that
the most widely used software is therefore of the highest quality. Except of course when MS is trying to enter a new
market, but I digress...
Do you honestly think that Joe User cared about CSS and XHTML support in 2001? or 2003?
Removing every feature that Joe Sixpack has never heard of is probably not a recipe for a good browser. For instance, we'd most likely lose SSL support if we follow that criteria, even today. "Secure Sockets Layer? Never heard of it!"
The facts are clear. Netscape couldn't compete because it sucked
Oddly enough, that particular opinion doesn't seem to have been widely held at Microsoft at the time. For instance:
Ah, what did he know, he's only a manager, right? Here's another one:
Pitting browser against browser is hard since Netscape has 80% marketshare and we have
--Former Microsoft Vice President James Allchin in an internal memo (ibid.)
Even Bill Gates seemed to think that bundling IE with the O/S was something to be smug about:
The interesting thing is that the big moral dilemma makes no practical difference to the game.
If you side with Werhner then you get to appoint yourself Lord of the Pitt in Ashur's place. Werhner doesn't mind, he even volunteers to keep the slaves in line so you don't need to worry about the day-to-day running of the place. You get the same perk either way, and the same benefits.
The only difference is in what the two say. Ashur tells you how in a generation there'll be no more slaves, but for now the slaves are necessary. With Werhner, the slaves may be technicallt free workers, but they still live and work in the same conditions, and are kept in line as brutally as ever, Kind of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".
I suppose it all comes down to who you trust. Personally, I'm inclined to think both Ashur and Werhner are sincere, but I'm inclined to side with Ashur, who not only seems the more competent of the two
but also lacks the bitter, vindictive streak that shows up in Werhner and Medea
Still, all things considered, the choice is about as one-dimensional, and as meaningless as that concerning the little sisters in Bioshock. I do think the Pitt's moral dilemma was
far better executed than the one in Bioshock. I just couldn't really tell you why.
Not disagreeing with anything you wrote - just musing, really.
I need friends more than I need it to be one tenth of one percent harder to steal my useless, indebted, tax-encumbered identity.
Well, everyone needs friends. That said, it's always worth having that extra half percent or so. There are non-linear relationships at work in these things. Half a percent could mean the difference between 50 people with the skill to rip you off, and opening your wallet to 50,000 potential thieves. Of course, if you don't have any money, that might not seem so important. But the you may not be poor in ten years time, and the information will still be out there.
Any time someone says "We all know" you should be as suspicious as when someone says "All you have to do is..." Either way, a line of bullshit will follow
Exactly. He's got nothing at all, so he's trying to whip up enthusiasm for... what's the "social trend" equivalent of vaoporware? A vaportrend?
Personally, I went by an alias when I signed up for my first BBS because it told me to, and I didn't want to buck their culture until I knew what I was bucking. I stuck with [a derivative of] it when I went to a Unix system, because it was just sort of how things were done... I had been culturalized
I think it's all a bit context dependent, really. My Slashdot posts appear under my real name. There are some other boards where I use an alias.
It seems Gareth Davis would like us to think that not sharing everything with his employers falls into the so 1999 category.
If that's the case, he can get off my lawn any time he likes.
On the other hand, it IS starting to look like Facebook has won the social networking battle among English speakers. I've resisted them thus far, but it looks like the way to go
Why? I mean what's the draw? You give out information to make life easier for the adbots and identity thieves,
you tie up all your contact list in someone's proprietary database, and in return you get... what, precisely?
I really can't see the appeal. (We're drifting a bit off topic here, but I'm genuinely curious about this).
There's a cultural shift towards people being willing, excited, and preferring to use their real world identities online.
Why, gosh, yes. I'm excited. I bet you're excited too, children!
We all know that 10 years ago, you were as anonymous as possible online, right?
Right? Right? Right? We all know that, don't we kiddies?
And today, we spend a lot of our time putting our real world identities out there and sharing them...
... because that's how Facebook makes its money.... I mean that's what all the cool kids are doing. And
you wouldn't want to feel left out, would you?
And we've seen this occur on Facebook.com, where as more and more people join Facebook and your social graph is more complete, you have the ability to have these social experiences with people you've never had before, and you're playing games with people whom you didn't play games with before
Whoa whoa whoa! When did all this happen? I'm still at the point of signing up so I can be like the cool kids. Can we back up a bit?
with your family members, with your parents, with friends in remote locations.
Yeah yeah yeah. Just another marketing drone practicing his second rate NLP language patterns. Nothing to see here...
I wouldn't be so quick to say that, in my opinion. This generation of gamers can get by with it easily, due to the fact that they've played those games before, and they're comfortable with that level of graphical presentation. Newer gamers, however, don't really have that advantage and probably wouldn't be able to sit through NES or SNES generation games for more than a few minutes before getting bored, unless they're clued in to the quality behind the games before hand.
I can relate to that. Going back to the film analogy, if I'm channel surfing and there's a B&W movie playing, I tend to click right past. But there's a load of really good black and white films out there,
and there's a number of them that I'll watch every chance I get.
Of course, there's also a lot of rubbish shot in B&W too. So maybe I shouldn't have said "all" those old games. But the graphics element still isn't a necessity for immersion - but it does lower the barrier to entry somewhat.
As a result, I have difficulties taking any game put out around 2000 seriously, with a few exceptions, despite the fact that I love a large number of sprite-based games, as well as everything on this side of the graphical divide.
Exactly. Although I do wonder if the fact that computer games were a new medium plays a role in that as well. Maybe game designers have grown better at their task, and
maybe there just weren't as many games from that era that will stand the test of time.
Still, it makes me wonder how the current generation of games will fare in 20 years time. Will there be a generation of gamers that refuse to look at Half-Life 2 because it has two-dimensional graphics
and wasn't written for a telepathic interface? I suppose it's never easy to tell the classics in a field until after some time has passed.
Excuse my rambling on here. It's just a subject that interests me.
In what way would you say that chess, poker, or basketball takes you "beyond your current reality"?
Chess is easy. It's no trouble at all to get lost concentrating on any highly abstract problem. I can "zen out" playing
Chess with no trouble at all.
Basketball and poker, I don't play. I do, however, think that physical like basketball have a different
psychological profile to computer games. I think it taps into a different part of our mind. That said,
I've had extremely immersive games of pinball before now, which I'd tend to put more in the
category of sports than of computer game, so I suspect it's entirely possible.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who first played Zork in the early 80s on a campus Unix box, I thought Zork: High Inquisitor captured the spirit of the original nicely. Which is more than the first two graphical adaptations did, admittedly. Still, it can be done.
But yeah, I think it really needs approaching from a different angle.
That doesn't sound right. From the GPLv2:
And then later:
So, no. There are limits on what further restrictions you can impose, and restrictions on actually using the software would seem to be among those disallowed.
Of course, if you take the view that running the program is not covered by the licence, rather than specifically granted (the language seems ambiguous to me, but IANAL) then we could get into the weird situation where you had the right to copy and distribute it, but not to run it. I'm sure someone will tell me why that isn't the case.
I don't think I want to eat Microsoft food. They'd probably try and make you ingest a device to analyse the contents of stomach and radio the results back to Microsoft.
You see, that seems to me to be fair enough. I'm not sure I share your outrage particularly, but at least you have a clear complaint that can be argued on its merits. Stick with that, and I don't have a problem.
*sigh* Then perhaps you'd indulge me a little further and explain with clarity some of the specific choices that will be denied to you should Richard succeed at his undoubtedly dastardly scheme. I'm interested in the nature of the deprivation here, rather than the timing.
Whoa. Slow down cowboy.
As regards the third item, that's the second time you've misrepresented my point of view in this way. Last time I asked you to quote the passage that lead you to draw that inference. So far you have not, so I'll ask you again: what did I write that sounded to you like "I know Richard is stealing our rights, but that's OK because he hasn't done it yet?" Or indeed "... that's OK because "
Citation needed, I think. RMS' writes a lot of stuff on a lot of sites. I'm not going to spend my time trying to guess which passages you find offensive purely to support your point.
Well, it certainly sounded as though you were advocating it. From that post:
Maybe I misunderstood your point, but it certainly sounded like you intended that to mean "the only free software is public domain".
Yes you have stated that repeatedly. The area where clarity is lacking is in how this takes away any choice from you personally. To say nothing of why you think you have a right to that choice. But first things first, we still haven't established that you're losing any choices as a result of Stallman's talking to people.
Putting you to inconvenience is not the same thing as removing your choices. And, frankly, I'm a little at a loss for what you'd propose here. Would you remove the Ubuntu distro's right to listen to Richard and to take his advice if they feel it to be the right thing to do? Or would you remove Richard's right to free speech lest he cause you some inconvenience? I don't think you're seriously advocating either, but I can't see possible remedy that doesn't boil down to one of those two.
Yes it is. And in case my position is unclear, I am not suggesting that zealotry is a good thing, and I agree that free software zealots do a lot of harm to the movement.
But none of that restricted your choices, or removed your rights.
All of which they already have, and none of which Richard is proposing be removed. Do you begin to see why I think clarity may be lacking in some areas?
And yet, that's exactly what you're doing here. You're saying "this is what I think is right and this is what I think is wrong, and this is what I think people should do". Which is all that Stallman is doing, and yet you criticise him in the strongest terms ... for criticising others for doing
things of which he doesn't approve.
There is no essential difference between what you are doing here on this board, and what you find so reprehensible in Stallman. Do you not see that?
Look: I've read enough of your posts on Slashdot. You've never struck me as a troll or a hypocrite, and you've never given me reason to think you unintelligent. But in this case, I can't help but think that you haven't thought this through properly.
How about you quote me the bit where I said that? Or even anything like it?
I'll consider being concerned if you can explain with clarity what choices you feel he is taking away from you.
Has it ever occurred to you that you're acting every bit as much the zealot in your advocacy of the public domain as the people you decry for unthinking adherence to the GPL? Could it be you've spent too long gazing into the abyss?
Exactly! Running copyright back to 5 years would be an all round good thing, certainly for the software industry. Making special provision to remove copyright from free software after five years would be Bad.
I believe he's entitled to do that. The reason he has such stature is that he has worked hard and accomplished much.
The only right he's ever been interested in restricting is the right to freeload on other people's hard work. And that remains purely on a voluntary basis by the people doing the work. Even the would be freeloader still gets more rights than they would if the software was released commercially.
If by "taking away your rights" you mean passing laws, seizing property, having people imprisoned and/or tortured, then yes, we should be concerned,
If by "taking away your rights" you mean talking to mozilla and trying to persuade to them make their software a little less business-friendly, then no, I don't think we need be especially concerned.
I can appreciate that you don't agree with everything Stallman says - I don't either. And you're certainly entitled to argue the opposing case should you wish. But trying to frame the argument in terms of Evil Richard Stealing All Our Rights smacks a bit of the Straw Man. It seems to me that the only "rights" he wants to remove are ones you never had in the first place.
No argument from me :)
Umm... from the rest of your comment, I'm guessing you mean that it can't be done without it being done both ways. Because copyright that expires after 5 years does so in both cases.
Not trying to be a smart-alec here, just making sure I understand your point.
To be fair, he's offering his opinion here. It's not like he's trying to abuse legislation to coerce uninvolved third parties.
I don't agree with everything Stallman says, but he's not exactly trampling anyone's choices into the dirt here.
As long as it works both ways, of course. If a commercial work is over five years old, then it too should pass into the public domain. As long as that's agreed, then yeah: fair is fair.
Without that, what you propose is a charter to plunder free software without offering anything in return.
[ different poster here, jumping in]
I think the original point, way up in the thread, was framed poorly. Clearly, we have no "rights" at all, save those that by convention, we grant ourselves. If you look at in those terms, the question becomes not do we have a right to Internet access? but rather should we grant ourselves a right to Internet access?. There may well be a case to be made for granting such a right, but I'll concede that thus far no-one has made it in a particularly convincing manner.
That aside, I feel the GP has nevertheless hit at the crux of the matter. The problem here is not so much that a company is disconnecting its clients. The problem is that a service is being removed without warning, and without any oversight or any requirement to show reasonable cause.
Consider a hypothetical situation: you go down to the pub one evening for a pint of beer. When you get there, you are accosted by a loud, obnoxious drunk. Despite your best efforts, an argument ensues.
So far, this is a scene that plays in bars across the world, night after night after night. But if it turns out that your drunken adversary was highly placed in Kingston Telecommunications, then he might well wake up deciding that you're just the sort of scumbag to indulge filesharing. Having reached this conclusion, he voices his suspicions and the next thing you know, you are without internet access.
At this point, If you have a home business that relies on the Internet, then your only option is to go to their offices and confess to a crime you did not commit, leaving yourself open to possible future legal action from various rights holding groups. *End of hypothetical scenario*
Now, I'm not suggesting that this has happened. However, it seems to be that there is nevertheless an unfair power imbalance here, and I don't think any system that allows such abuses is desirable.
Furthermore, while the case may not be made that Internet access is a right, I believe we should have a right not to be subject to arbitrary abuse when our livelihood may be on the line. I think this is the essence of the original argument.
Mmmm, yes, but that was after IE was bundled in with Windows. Netscape was bleeding money by then, and ready to try something desperate. I'll grant that the full rewrite was a strategic error, but the damage had already been done by then.
Really? Where. precisely? Microsoft? Pity you weren't around to testify during the anti-trust trials.
And for the record, I'm old enough to remember it all happening as well, so I'm no more impressed by your age and your block caps than I was by your bluster and sarcasm.
On Bizzarro world, maybe.
Let's try this again: If you decide to cite any evidence to support your rather odd version of events, then we can probably continue this discussion. If not, then I'll have to assume that you don't have anything further to add to the debate, in which case I'll just leave you to play on your own.
Either way, I hope the weather is nice in whatever parallel universe you happen to be inhabiting.
So what? You're trying to tell me that you know more about it than a bunch of guys who were there at the time, who worked for Microsoft, and who commited their opinions on the subject to writing. And I'm the one refusing to address the point? Really?
Remind me: who's the zealot here again?
Basically and fundamentally because IE5 was such a monumental pile of crap, and because MS rested on their laurels and refused to update the damn thing once they thought the browser war was won. IE earned such a bad reputation that people are now willing to download and use a new browser. This wasn't the case in 1995 when IE was the new kid on the block.
There's also the question of business models. Netscape was shareware. It depended on people buying the product. That worked surprising well while MS were selling IE as a separate shrink wrap product, and very poorly once there was a browser bundled with the O/S. Neither Firefox nor Opera have that problem.
When the shareware income dried up, Netscape did try to switch to a model like Opera's early ad-driven approach, but they were rather heavy handed about it, and that's when Netscape started to suck.
Gee, Jim Alchin didn't think so. Bill Gates didn't think so. Paul Maritz didn't think so when he threatened to cut off Netscape's "air supply". The court that found Microsoft guilty of abusing its monopoly position didn't think so.
Look: you're arguing contrary to the written record here. If you really think you have a point, you'll need to produce something more than sarcasm and bluster to back it up. Otherwise, you're just going to make yourself look silly.
Whoops, I messed up the Alchin quote - didn't spot the angle bracket. This is how it should have read:
Standards compliance is a reasonable way of evaluating the how "good" one piece of software is in comparison with another. Not the only possible criteria to be sure, but probably better than the notion so beloved of MS apologists that the most widely used software is therefore of the highest quality. Except of course when MS is trying to enter a new market, but I digress...
Removing every feature that Joe Sixpack has never heard of is probably not a recipe for a good browser. For instance, we'd most likely lose SSL support if we follow that criteria, even today. "Secure Sockets Layer? Never heard of it!"
Oddly enough, that particular opinion doesn't seem to have been widely held at Microsoft at the time. For instance:
Ah, what did he know, he's only a manager, right? Here's another one:
Even Bill Gates seemed to think that bundling IE with the O/S was something to be smug about:
Gosh, if only he'd known. All that effort, and now you're telling us that Microsoft's bundling had nothing to do with Netscape's downfall.
I bet Bill feels really stupid now that you've come along to set the record straight.
The interesting thing is that the big moral dilemma makes no practical difference to the game.
If you side with Werhner then you get to appoint yourself Lord of the Pitt in Ashur's place. Werhner doesn't mind, he even volunteers to keep the slaves in line so you don't need to worry about the day-to-day running of the place. You get the same perk either way, and the same benefits.
The only difference is in what the two say. Ashur tells you how in a generation there'll be no more slaves, but for now the slaves are necessary. With Werhner, the slaves may be technicallt free workers, but they still live and work in the same conditions, and are kept in line as brutally as ever, Kind of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".
I suppose it all comes down to who you trust. Personally, I'm inclined to think both Ashur and Werhner are sincere, but I'm inclined to side with Ashur, who not only seems the more competent of the two but also lacks the bitter, vindictive streak that shows up in Werhner and Medea
Still, all things considered, the choice is about as one-dimensional, and as meaningless as that concerning the little sisters in Bioshock. I do think the Pitt's moral dilemma was far better executed than the one in Bioshock. I just couldn't really tell you why.
Not disagreeing with anything you wrote - just musing, really.
Well, everyone needs friends. That said, it's always worth having that extra half percent or so. There are non-linear relationships at work in these things. Half a percent could mean the difference between 50 people with the skill to rip you off, and opening your wallet to 50,000 potential thieves. Of course, if you don't have any money, that might not seem so important. But the you may not be poor in ten years time, and the information will still be out there.
Still, I guess everyone has their own priorities.
Exactly. He's got nothing at all, so he's trying to whip up enthusiasm for ... what's the "social trend" equivalent of vaoporware? A vaportrend?
I think it's all a bit context dependent, really. My Slashdot posts appear under my real name. There are some other boards where I use an alias. It seems Gareth Davis would like us to think that not sharing everything with his employers falls into the so 1999 category. If that's the case, he can get off my lawn any time he likes.
Why? I mean what's the draw? You give out information to make life easier for the adbots and identity thieves, you tie up all your contact list in someone's proprietary database, and in return you get ... what, precisely?
I really can't see the appeal. (We're drifting a bit off topic here, but I'm genuinely curious about this).
Why, gosh, yes. I'm excited. I bet you're excited too, children!
Right? Right? Right? We all know that, don't we kiddies?
Whoa whoa whoa! When did all this happen? I'm still at the point of signing up so I can be like the cool kids. Can we back up a bit?
Yeah yeah yeah. Just another marketing drone practicing his second rate NLP language patterns. Nothing to see here...
Why stop at the outside? Break into the place and scrawl all over his wallpaper. That's effectively what anti-sec did here.
Properly done, yes. :)
I can relate to that. Going back to the film analogy, if I'm channel surfing and there's a B&W movie playing, I tend to click right past. But there's a load of really good black and white films out there, and there's a number of them that I'll watch every chance I get.
Of course, there's also a lot of rubbish shot in B&W too. So maybe I shouldn't have said "all" those old games. But the graphics element still isn't a necessity for immersion - but it does lower the barrier to entry somewhat.
Exactly. Although I do wonder if the fact that computer games were a new medium plays a role in that as well. Maybe game designers have grown better at their task, and maybe there just weren't as many games from that era that will stand the test of time.
Still, it makes me wonder how the current generation of games will fare in 20 years time. Will there be a generation of gamers that refuse to look at Half-Life 2 because it has two-dimensional graphics and wasn't written for a telepathic interface? I suppose it's never easy to tell the classics in a field until after some time has passed.
Excuse my rambling on here. It's just a subject that interests me.
Chess is easy. It's no trouble at all to get lost concentrating on any highly abstract problem. I can "zen out" playing Chess with no trouble at all.
Basketball and poker, I don't play. I do, however, think that physical like basketball have a different psychological profile to computer games. I think it taps into a different part of our mind. That said, I've had extremely immersive games of pinball before now, which I'd tend to put more in the category of sports than of computer game, so I suspect it's entirely possible.