The people developing this want to spend their time on the project, and that's all that matters.... or so the discussion would go if the Cosmos creators hadn't built this on a Microsoft foundation.
I think that's fair enough in any case. It's a hobby project, they should work on whatever appeals to them
However....
I expect a lot of comments will take a completely different viewpoint, given they'll see this as "tainted" by Microsoft.
... that doesn't mean that all such concerns are entirely unfounded. The patents supposedly encumbering the.NET framework are going reduce the number of environments where this is likely to be deployed. And the fact that you can't develop the solely using the OS is going to put a lot of people off, too. It's a different issue, really.
Don't get me wrong - it's a cool piece of tech, if only in the sense of "whoever would have thought it possible?", But given the technology base, it seems unlikely to get the level of deployment and/or developer buy-in needed to lift it above the level of a toy OS.
Take something like Power Shell. Power Shell is awsome. Unix/Linux shell lovers should really be ashamed of how little they expect from their tools - their 70s text-based poorly engineered tools, in contrast to the Power Shell that pipes objects
Inflamatory adjectives aside, that's deeply debatable.
A fair bit of thought went into deciding just what Unix pipes should stream. Bytes were chosen because a byte stream is a universal interface, and based upon that you can add whatever layers of sophistication you need.
Start off by piping objects however and you can no longer stream anything that can't be expressed in terms of the object heirarchy. So you can place limitations on the usefullness of the pipe, and exert some control over the applications (and operating systems) where the technology can be usefully deployed.
This is the sort of thing that probably sounds like a feature when it's proposed in Redmond, but to *nix guys it's more akin to a bug. In some ways it's the problem with Microsoft and Free Software in microcosm.
Another reason: If you want to use a cool new technology on Linux, you google it and you find a handful of Howto files. Follow the instructions and you're away.
Run the same search on something developed for Windows and you get two dozen Microsoft MVPs all dropping vague hints to try and pimp their latest book.
The thing I like about firefox is that you can completely rearrange the interface. For me every version has looked the same.. I don't really care what they do with the default settings.
I know they keep making harder to find out how to put it back the way it was.
I get fed up of playing "hunt the toolbar" with each new version.
I swear, it's like every release, someone at mozilla has said "right: which of the features that made our browser popular can we get rid of this time?"
Am I really the only one who'd jump at a chance to run 1.2 or thereabouts with modern security updates? A genuinely lightweight browser, everything easy to move around, and all the complicated stuff in addons where it belongs. First browser I get that does that and still lets me install equivalents to adblock, noscript and cookie safe, and I am so abandoning Firefox.
If by "abandoned" you mean "continued to fund", then yes, I suppose they did.
So strategically, businesswise, I would abandon Google and go with Bing.
Yep, because Microsoft has no history at all of shafting its business partners and has no vested interest whatsover in seeing firefox fall by the wayside. And to think I was worried for a second there...
Folks: Google is the new evil empire. Microsoft is a weak old underdog.
After all, saying it is enough to make it true. Which is probably just as well, since it takes more than "makes a lot of money" to qualify as an "evil empire". Similarly, just because MS have been unable to dent Google's dominance in online search, that's not enough to make them the underdog in the wider scheme of things.
Please adjust your silly outdated prejudices accordingly.
First of all you'll have to supply me with something less silly to take their place. You are so going in the wrong direction at the moment.
The thinking is that pirates have a very short attention span. Most pirates are (theoretically) uninterested in playing games that are months old; if you can keep the game secure for a month or two, then the DRM has justified itself. The people who were sitting on the fence will purchase the game, rather than pirating it, and the people who would have been freeloading are kept off your servers, reducing your operating costs.
A theory? Then we ought to test it. Let's look at the torrents for Assassin's Creed. You might need to sort them by seeders.
Right now I see that AC2 has 495 seeders and 284 leechers. That's what? Nine months after the PC release? Doesn't sound like no interest to me.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, five months on has 2399 seeders right now, and 1175 leechers.
Also, there are other torrents being seeded and downloaded. Those are just the two best-seeded ones. And all this is in the face of always-on DRM.
Whoever came up with the theory didn't bother doing even the most basic research.
I would expect that titles with a great deal of piracy are somehow detected by this. If they know that they have actually sold X units through retail, and they have X+Y connections, then the number of pirated instances is Y.
Assuming, of course that none of the pirate strategies involved short-circuiting the phone-home feature altogether, or communicating with a dummy server. Otherwise they can't see the pirate instances at all. Which would render their estimates on the optimistic side, at best.
The thing to remember is that some people at Ubisoft has spent a hell of a lot of Ubi's money on this strategy. These guys are seriously invested in DRM being successful. Or at least appearing to be successful. It stands to reason they're going to try and spin it as a success.
The interesting thing to note however is that they're telling us how piracy rates have dropped due to DRM, rather than how sales have risen for DRM'd titles. If sales had so risen, they'd be fools not to shout it from the rooftops.
Since they're not doing that, I find myself wondering if some poor sod has been given one last chance to salvage his or her career by showing that always-on DRM isn't just the expensive, ineffective sales killer it appears to be.
Losing a user means nothing except in subscription based games. Losing a sale means a whole lot more.
Well, except that when you pollute your brand identity enough, all lost users are lost sales. Because if people start to think "Ubisoft" == "can't play my game because the servers are always down" == "waste of money", then they don't buy any more Ubisoft games, and it's not just one lost sale, but all the future sales they might have made to that user. Apply that across a significant percentage of the brand's userbase, and the bottom line starts to hurt.
But nevertheless, I take your point. And yet what I'm not hearing from Ubi is "sales are rising despite DRM".
CmdrTaco is perfectly allowed to kick me in the nuts when I piss off his very powerful friends, yes
A little clarification might be useful here. Is that a confession of some strange masochism, or merely advocacy of different laws/standards of behavior for the rich and poor?
I think it's very good that they decided to allow a group of people that was actually doing something with the IP to do it, rather than just sit on it, make them reinvent the wheel, and possibly sue them afterwards.
I agree entirely. However, there's a question that no-one seems to be asking: if Mono was as open, and as free of IP encumberances as Miguel has always maintained it is, then what IP did they need?
And if Attachmate held IP that prevented Xamarin from developing the project further, what does that imply for projects using Mono?
They require you use the name you "commonly go by".
Hmmm... you snipped that quote off a little early. This is the first paragraph from the link you posted.
Google services support three different types of use new window when it comes to your identity: unidentified, pseudonymous, identified. Google Profiles is a product that works best in the identified state. This way you can be certain youâ(TM)re connecting with the right person, and others will have confidence knowing that there is someone real behind the profile theyâ(TM)re checking out. For this reason, Google Profiles requires you to use the name that you commonly go by in daily life.
So unless your nickname is pretty much the only one people know you by, then real names are going to be required. Of course, it remains to be seen how strictly they choose to enforce that, but the wording seems clear enough.
You're right. Because I stopped actually arguing for my position when it because clear you weren't listening
You mean to say it only looked like you'd run out of arguments and were being rude because you couldn't think of anything else to say? I must say, you were awfully convincing.
Feel free to huff and puff a bit more if you like. I'm not particularly interested in your opinions regarding myself, so I shan't be reading the next one.
Yeah... I'd have to name some economists and link you to the idea that they support. And in that link, it would be helpful if those economists were mentioned. Too bad I didn't do that, right?... hold on, let me check something...
Well, you got as far as naming the economists. And then you vaguely suggested that if I went away and read up on the subject I'd probably find something somewhere that supported your point.
Thing is, it's not my responsibility to do the work to support your point. Otherwise all I have to do is say "You are an idiot. The Internet has proof. Don't come back until you've found it" and it's game over, dude.
But sure, let's move on to ad-hominum attacks, since you're fundamentally incapable of assimilating new and relevant information to this conversation.
Actulally, you've offered precious little but ad-hominems for the last three posts, so it's not exactly "moving on" in any widely recognised sense of the word.
And don't forget, if you don't really bother to read the responses to your posts and just continue repeating your initial ideas... you'll never lose an argument.
About that. How well do you think it's working for you, right now?
Mostly because the other person will realize that talking with you is an exercise in futility and leave.
First sensible thing you've said in four posts. Let's leave it there, before things degenerate any further.
Well, the basically destructive nature of the process, you've pretty much conceded with the term "slash-and-burn", or so it seems to me. The scope of that destruction is the point under debate. We've both expressed a number of opinions in that regard. Or are you prepared to support your assertion that there is nothing un-ethical about MBA slash-and-burn?
No, I'm not going to defend creative destruction. I will let both Karl Marx [wikipedia.org] and John Maynard Keynes defend it. I figure between Marxism/communism and Free market economics, you'll find an argument that suites your political background.
I'm not personally aware that either Keynes or Marx suggested that wholesale asset stripping of an economy would be a good thing. And even if they did, I would venture to say that it doesn't seem to be working out all that well in practice.
Of course, if you really want to get all snippy about justifying our arguments, then you have to do a lot more than drop the names of a couple of famous economists into the debate. A fallacious appeal to authority, I believe that's called...
So, on one hand, you'd like me to act within the law, if possible. Because that's alright. But on the other hand, you'd like MBAs to stop acting within the law. Because they need ethics?
Not quite. I'm saying that if you feel that I am a menace to society and must be stopped (as per your hypothetical argument in your previous post) then you have a moral right (and possibly obligation) to do so, so long as you act inside the law. Similarly, if wider business community decides that MBA short-termism is proving toxic to the economy then they have a right and possibly obligation to work within the law to counter that. Up to and including changing said law through legislative channels.
Seriously. You know the character in this skit, that acts like an immature idiot college kid? That's you. Sure, it's lowbrow humour (idiots make such easy targets), but it's also on an intellectual level that you probably won't get - so I don't have to feel bad about hurting your feelings!
Fascinating. Remind me to look at it sometime. Meantime, we were discussing MBAs?
Really? You have proof? Or is that just your opinion.
Well, the basically destructive nature of the process, you've pretty much conceded with the term "slash-and-burn", or so it seems to me. The scope of that destruction is the point under debate.
We've both expressed a number of opinions in that regard. Or are you prepared to support your assertion that there is nothing un-ethical about MBA slash-and-burn?
I think that retards like you are ruining the world. Am I morally justified (or even compelled!) to get rid of you?
Oh dear, and we were being so polite, too. To answer the question, if you can make a case that I'm damaging the quality of life of a large number of people, and you can find a way to do it within the law, then yes, you should probably make the attempt.
None of which is a reason why we shouldn't re-examine the role of MBAs in the world of modern business.
Sure, it's the MBAs that are slashing and burning. But you know who is hiring them? Shareholders. People who own stock. If you want to blame someone, don't blame the guy who gets approached by a publicly traded company, offered a HUGE amount of money and asked to go destroy the company from the inside.
mmm... doesn't work.
If I hire a hitman to shoot you through the head, I may have done a bad thing, but that doesn't excuse the fellow who pulled the trigger. And it doesn't matter if I paid him a ton of money to do so. Nor does it matter if he found the work to be really easy and really enjoyable. He's still done a bad thing.
Of course, you already argued that the work (unlike that of the hitman) is not fundamentally un-ethical. So let's talk about that next.
And it's not even un-ethical work, the company "boss" is asking you to take the job. You're not killing baby seals.
No, you're not. What you are doing is knowingly and willingly destroying the vital national economic infrastructure for short term personal gain. Which is arguably rather worse.
I think I'll stand by the "hitman" analogy.
Who in their right mind wouldn't take said job?
Me. OK, I suppose we could argue about to what extent I can be considered to be in my right mind. Nevertheless...
It comes back to the same point. Is the MBA slash and burn mentality sufficiently damaging to society that we should take steps to discourage the approach? It's not enough to say "it makes some people rich so it must be all right", otherwise shooting people for money would be legal.
Yes, they are rejects. That's why they're paid more in a year to slash and burn your company than you get paid in 10. Obviously, they're failing at SOMETHING. Likely though, they console themselves with 7 series BMWs and lots of pretty women. I doubt that your scorn causes them to have problems sleeping at night.
And if the purpose of this discussion was to make all the MBAs burst into tears and run home to their mommas, you'd probably have a telling point. But I don't think that's the object of the exercise in this case.
So far as I can see, the question under debate is to what extend the general MBA approach is toxic to the wider economy, and whether or not we are all of us paying the price for those "slash and burn" tactics.
I'm sure those BMWs are a source of great comfort to their owners, but they don't really constitute an argument for letting said owners keep slashing and burning.
Experiance from smartphones and games consoles shows that when corportate overlords make those kind of descisions they don't always have their users best interests at heart.
Yes, except there is no other real solution
I think that should probably read "there is no solution at all". Global centralised corporate control of what software may and may not be installed on a private computer? I don't see that as practical, feasible, likely or desirable.
You would stifle Internet innovation and free market competition, purely to try and stop fools from being foolish. The aim is not achievable, and the proposal stands to cause great harm and very little good.
It's not a matter of "common sense", it's a matter of game theory. Individual developers will see it as in his best interests to list on as many top tier stores as possible
Isn't that jumping the gun a little, though? Amazon has considerable marketing power, it true. But that doesn't mean they're going to emerge as a top tier app store any more than Microsoft's money and brand guarantees that Windows Phone 7 will emerge as market leader.
Generally the rule seems to be "first get your lock in, then abuse your users/developers/whatever" I can't help feeling Amazon are being a bit premature here.
You're pathetic. But, you needn't be ashamed: You got modded +4 Insightful, so apparently there's at least 4 others on Slashdot that feel the way you do.
And of course, the GP isn't the one resorting to nasty and mean-spirited personal attacks just because he doesn't like what he's reading. So he's got that going for him too.
The point is that if you make paying for content into a convenient way to enjoy the content, people will pay. iTunes stands as proof of that.
On the other hand if you make paid-for content significantly less convenient than the alternatives, then you're going to see a proportion of your customers dropping out of the revenue stream. Probably too many for you to try and shame each one individually, but hey - don't let me put you off trying.
Really, none of this is particularly controversial. In most areas of business it's understood that if you want people to give you money, you make things as easy for them as possible. When it comes to digital media though, the IP cartels seem to be falling over themselves trying to find ways of further penalising their paying customers.
It just doesn't seem like sound business strategy to me.
I see the smiley, but I think this raises an interesting point. When you cite Euclid, you are citing truths that can be reproduced and verified. Or in one case, disproven. In any event, it doesn't require anything to be taken on faith.
Now when it's possible to sit at home with a blank universe and say "Let there be light", that's when the Bible gains equal credibility in scientific matters. Assuming the data can be replicated, that is.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that's fair enough in any case. It's a hobby project, they should work on whatever appeals to them
However ....
Don't get me wrong - it's a cool piece of tech, if only in the sense of "whoever would have thought it possible?", But given the technology base, it seems unlikely to get the level of deployment and/or developer buy-in needed to lift it above the level of a toy OS.
Every now and then, reality self-organises in the direction of justice.
Inflamatory adjectives aside, that's deeply debatable. A fair bit of thought went into deciding just what Unix pipes should stream. Bytes were chosen because a byte stream is a universal interface, and based upon that you can add whatever layers of sophistication you need.
Start off by piping objects however and you can no longer stream anything that can't be expressed in terms of the object heirarchy. So you can place limitations on the usefullness of the pipe, and exert some control over the applications (and operating systems) where the technology can be usefully deployed.
This is the sort of thing that probably sounds like a feature when it's proposed in Redmond, but to *nix guys it's more akin to a bug. In some ways it's the problem with Microsoft and Free Software in microcosm.
Another reason: If you want to use a cool new technology on Linux, you google it and you find a handful of Howto files. Follow the instructions and you're away.
Run the same search on something developed for Windows and you get two dozen Microsoft MVPs all dropping vague hints to try and pimp their latest book.
Well, only in so far as TFA suggested using UTC in the first place.
Umm... I dunno. It's not something I think a lot about.
Should it? Do you think?
I know they keep making harder to find out how to put it back the way it was.
I get fed up of playing "hunt the toolbar" with each new version.
I swear, it's like every release, someone at mozilla has said "right: which of the features that made our browser popular can we get rid of this time?"
Am I really the only one who'd jump at a chance to run 1.2 or thereabouts with modern security updates? A genuinely lightweight browser, everything easy to move around, and all the complicated stuff in addons where it belongs. First browser I get that does that and still lets me install equivalents to adblock, noscript and cookie safe, and I am so abandoning Firefox.
If by "abandoned" you mean "continued to fund", then yes, I suppose they did.
Yep, because Microsoft has no history at all of shafting its business partners and has no vested interest whatsover in seeing firefox fall by the wayside. And to think I was worried for a second there...
After all, saying it is enough to make it true. Which is probably just as well, since it takes more than "makes a lot of money" to qualify as an "evil empire". Similarly, just because MS have been unable to dent Google's dominance in online search, that's not enough to make them the underdog in the wider scheme of things.
First of all you'll have to supply me with something less silly to take their place. You are so going in the wrong direction at the moment.
Which isn't the same thing as "most pirates have a short attention span", which was the point I was addressing.
A theory? Then we ought to test it. Let's look at the torrents for Assassin's Creed. You might need to sort them by seeders.
Right now I see that AC2 has 495 seeders and 284 leechers. That's what? Nine months after the PC release? Doesn't sound like no interest to me.
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, five months on has 2399 seeders right now, and 1175 leechers.
Also, there are other torrents being seeded and downloaded. Those are just the two best-seeded ones. And all this is in the face of always-on DRM.
Whoever came up with the theory didn't bother doing even the most basic research.
Assuming, of course that none of the pirate strategies involved short-circuiting the phone-home feature altogether, or communicating with a dummy server. Otherwise they can't see the pirate instances at all. Which would render their estimates on the optimistic side, at best.
The thing to remember is that some people at Ubisoft has spent a hell of a lot of Ubi's money on this strategy. These guys are seriously invested in DRM being successful. Or at least appearing to be successful. It stands to reason they're going to try and spin it as a success.
The interesting thing to note however is that they're telling us how piracy rates have dropped due to DRM, rather than how sales have risen for DRM'd titles. If sales had so risen, they'd be fools not to shout it from the rooftops.
Since they're not doing that, I find myself wondering if some poor sod has been given one last chance to salvage his or her career by showing that always-on DRM isn't just the expensive, ineffective sales killer it appears to be.
Well, except that when you pollute your brand identity enough, all lost users are lost sales. Because if people start to think "Ubisoft" == "can't play my game because the servers are always down" == "waste of money", then they don't buy any more Ubisoft games, and it's not just one lost sale, but all the future sales they might have made to that user. Apply that across a significant percentage of the brand's userbase, and the bottom line starts to hurt.
But nevertheless, I take your point. And yet what I'm not hearing from Ubi is "sales are rising despite DRM".
Interesting.
A little clarification might be useful here. Is that a confession of some strange masochism, or merely advocacy of different laws/standards of behavior for the rich and poor?
I agree entirely. However, there's a question that no-one seems to be asking: if Mono was as open, and as free of IP encumberances as Miguel has always maintained it is, then what IP did they need?
And if Attachmate held IP that prevented Xamarin from developing the project further, what does that imply for projects using Mono?
Hmmm... you snipped that quote off a little early. This is the first paragraph from the link you posted.
So unless your nickname is pretty much the only one people know you by, then real names are going to be required. Of course, it remains to be seen how strictly they choose to enforce that, but the wording seems clear enough.
You mean to say it only looked like you'd run out of arguments and were being rude because you couldn't think of anything else to say? I must say, you were awfully convincing.
Feel free to huff and puff a bit more if you like. I'm not particularly interested in your opinions regarding myself, so I shan't be reading the next one.
Well, you got as far as naming the economists. And then you vaguely suggested that if I went away and read up on the subject I'd probably find something somewhere that supported your point.
Thing is, it's not my responsibility to do the work to support your point. Otherwise all I have to do is say "You are an idiot. The Internet has proof. Don't come back until you've found it" and it's game over, dude.
Actulally, you've offered precious little but ad-hominems for the last three posts, so it's not exactly "moving on" in any widely recognised sense of the word.
About that. How well do you think it's working for you, right now?
First sensible thing you've said in four posts. Let's leave it there, before things degenerate any further.
I'm not personally aware that either Keynes or Marx suggested that wholesale asset stripping of an economy would be a good thing. And even if they did, I would venture to say that it doesn't seem to be working out all that well in practice.
Of course, if you really want to get all snippy about justifying our arguments, then you have to do a lot more than drop the names of a couple of famous economists into the debate. A fallacious appeal to authority, I believe that's called...
Not quite. I'm saying that if you feel that I am a menace to society and must be stopped (as per your hypothetical argument in your previous post) then you have a moral right (and possibly obligation) to do so, so long as you act inside the law. Similarly, if wider business community decides that MBA short-termism is proving toxic to the economy then they have a right and possibly obligation to work within the law to counter that. Up to and including changing said law through legislative channels.
Fascinating. Remind me to look at it sometime. Meantime, we were discussing MBAs?
Well, the basically destructive nature of the process, you've pretty much conceded with the term "slash-and-burn", or so it seems to me. The scope of that destruction is the point under debate.
We've both expressed a number of opinions in that regard. Or are you prepared to support your assertion that there is nothing un-ethical about MBA slash-and-burn?
Oh dear, and we were being so polite, too. To answer the question, if you can make a case that I'm damaging the quality of life of a large number of people, and you can find a way to do it within the law, then yes, you should probably make the attempt.
None of which is a reason why we shouldn't re-examine the role of MBAs in the world of modern business.
mmm... doesn't work.
If I hire a hitman to shoot you through the head, I may have done a bad thing, but that doesn't excuse the fellow who pulled the trigger. And it doesn't matter if I paid him a ton of money to do so. Nor does it matter if he found the work to be really easy and really enjoyable. He's still done a bad thing.
Of course, you already argued that the work (unlike that of the hitman) is not fundamentally un-ethical. So let's talk about that next.
No, you're not. What you are doing is knowingly and willingly destroying the vital national economic infrastructure for short term personal gain. Which is arguably rather worse.
I think I'll stand by the "hitman" analogy.
Me. OK, I suppose we could argue about to what extent I can be considered to be in my right mind. Nevertheless ...
It comes back to the same point. Is the MBA slash and burn mentality sufficiently damaging to society that we should take steps to discourage the approach? It's not enough to say "it makes some people rich so it must be all right", otherwise shooting people for money would be legal.
And if the purpose of this discussion was to make all the MBAs burst into tears and run home to their mommas, you'd probably have a telling point. But I don't think that's the object of the exercise in this case.
So far as I can see, the question under debate is to what extend the general MBA approach is toxic to the wider economy, and whether or not we are all of us paying the price for those "slash and burn" tactics.
I'm sure those BMWs are a source of great comfort to their owners, but they don't really constitute an argument for letting said owners keep slashing and burning.
Nicely put. I just wish I had mod points.
I think that should probably read "there is no solution at all". Global centralised corporate control of what software may and may not be installed on a private computer? I don't see that as practical, feasible, likely or desirable.
You would stifle Internet innovation and free market competition, purely to try and stop fools from being foolish. The aim is not achievable, and the proposal stands to cause great harm and very little good.
No sale, I'm afraid.
Isn't that jumping the gun a little, though? Amazon has considerable marketing power, it true. But that doesn't mean they're going to emerge as a top tier app store any more than Microsoft's money and brand guarantees that Windows Phone 7 will emerge as market leader.
Generally the rule seems to be "first get your lock in, then abuse your users/developers/whatever" I can't help feeling Amazon are being a bit premature here.
And of course, the GP isn't the one resorting to nasty and mean-spirited personal attacks just because he doesn't like what he's reading. So he's got that going for him too.
The point is that if you make paying for content into a convenient way to enjoy the content, people will pay. iTunes stands as proof of that. On the other hand if you make paid-for content significantly less convenient than the alternatives, then you're going to see a proportion of your customers dropping out of the revenue stream. Probably too many for you to try and shame each one individually, but hey - don't let me put you off trying.
Really, none of this is particularly controversial. In most areas of business it's understood that if you want people to give you money, you make things as easy for them as possible. When it comes to digital media though, the IP cartels seem to be falling over themselves trying to find ways of further penalising their paying customers.
It just doesn't seem like sound business strategy to me.
I see the smiley, but I think this raises an interesting point. When you cite Euclid, you are citing truths that can be reproduced and verified. Or in one case, disproven. In any event, it doesn't require anything to be taken on faith.
Now when it's possible to sit at home with a blank universe and say "Let there be light", that's when the Bible gains equal credibility in scientific matters. Assuming the data can be replicated, that is.
http://xkcd.com/556/