why GNOME and the perl foundry but no KDE or Java Foundry?
At a guess, google are building a corporate strategy around the first two technologies and would like these projects to yield results that they would find useful.
Normally I dislike arguments of the form "it's their dollar so they can do what they like" but in this case, it doesn't seem to odious a restriction.
Nor should the government's capacity for graft and bungling be forgotten. Municipal wireless isn't automatically a Good Thing(tm).
Not that this affects me in any direct manner, but does someone want to explain to me how the world will end if one or more cites be allowed to set up muni-wifi. Then you could wait a few years and compare the municipal ones with the private ones.
Then you'd have some hard evidence as to which was working better. Without data, everyone is reduced to arguing from faith, making this more of a religious flame war than a rational debate. With a health dollop of astroturfing thrown in for good measure, unless I miss my guess.
They're trying to whitewash the GNU Project out of history
Umm... Who are "they" in this context? Microsoft? Sinister Minions of Eric S. Raymond? The Orbital Mind Control Lasers?
I've just got up, so forgive me if I seem a little dense. Maybe you meant to refer to those of us who support Free Software without the wholesale adoption of each and every Stallman dictum? If we can starve it of new contributors, simply because we don't like the governing mindset, maybe it's an institution whose time has come.
Actually, that's an interesting idea. I remember one slashdotter explaining AOLs latest downturn by suggesting that AOL represented an intermediary phase; that it was internet lite for americans who were interested in this internet thing, but who were used to more the structured world of television. For these people AOL provided a useful halfway house between TV and the anarchic decentralisation of the internet.
The downside of that, of course, was that as those AOL customers came to understand that the internet could and should be, so they came first to chafe under the restrictions imposed by AOL, and then to seek new IPSs.
Perhaps we may then speculate that the GNU Project too may be an intermediate phase - Free Software Lite, if you will. If GNU can be starved of developers in the manner you suggest, perhaps that's because people who understand the idea of free software are now starting to chafe under the weight of groupthink mandated by the GNU orthodoxy.
Every time I read this, I try again if RMS is telling me how to call it. I say "Linux." "Linux." "Linux.". And so far I still could. Not even a puff of smoke from which St. IGNUtius appears.
Lovely! Mind you, I didn't complain about Stallman teleporting into my home everytime I utter the incantation "Linux! Linux! Linux!" Rather, a poster asked why people insisted on badgering Stallman, and I offered a very personal opinion of how the great man aquired Feet of Clay in my mind. You are of course free to accept this information, ignore it, or attack me for holding it.
Nevertheless, to the extent you choose to consider my opinion, I'd ask you to consider it in context.
1) he doesn't tell you how you should refer to it. HE refers to it that way
That isn't what Stallman says. I expect he should know, right? This is from hios slashdot interview:
The reason I continue asking people to use the term "GNU/Linux" for the combination of the GNU operating system with the kernel, Linux, is that it's an important little detail.
That sounds like he's telling me what I should call it.
Calling the whole system "Linux" leads people to think that the system's development was started in 1991 by Linus Torvalds. That is what most users seem to think.
Never would have occurred to me, personally.
This leads users to take their philosophical lead from Linus's "apolitical" views, rather than from the GNU Project.
Not that he's letting his personal dislike of Linus' apolitical stance colour his perceptions or anything.
See, he says things like this, and it sounds to me like his love of freedom comes second to his love of the spotlight.
2) he won't sue you if you call it different
Oh well, that's all right then. Really, I don't like having branding forced down my throat. Neither by Gates, nor by Stallman, thank you very much.
4) if you think of something similar as GNU, you can call it anyway you want.
Cute, but it misses the point. I'm not telling him anything. He on the other hand is is tellimg me waht I should call a system that uses software he intended to be used freely by others.
Stallman is a great man in many ways. But on this one specific point, he should practice what he preaches a little more rigorously. Such pettiness is unbecoming for a man of his stature.
Why the younger generation open source enthusiasts continue to badger Mr. Stallman is beyond me.
You want to know? Personally speaking, he lost a lot of my sympathy when he started insisting on tagging GNU on the front of Linux. If this is "free as in speech", why the merry hell is he telling me how I may and may not refer to the operating system I use.
I read an interview where he said the only reason was that it provided an "educational opportunity". I could respect that if he insisted on Linux/GNU. On the other hand, his continuing insistence on first billing smacks of a personal dislike of Linus, and of sour grapes regarding the marginalisation of the GNU Hurd.
I won't dispute the good Stallman's done, but really, he does himself no favours sometimes.
Disagreeing is of course your privilege. However the interesting thing about this article, really, is the degree to which the author's preferences reflect the consensus of the gaming community.
Personally, I've yet to seean article that says "I want stupider monsters, more ammo starvation, I don't think I pay enough per minute for my MMOGs, nd every game in the world should be a post-apocalype first person shooter". Of course, that may say more about the sites I read than it does about by gamer consensus.
So what would be really useful for this discussion would be if, rather than just disagreeing, you told us what you disagreed with and why and what you'd prefer in its place.
That way the community gets a chance see if your preferences resonate more strongly with their own experience.
DeusEx. The original, that is. The devs tried very hard with the sequel, but like a good novel, the original had explored pretty much every aspect of its theme.
DeusEx managed to be a good FP shooter/sneaker depending on your choice of strategy. It fell somewhat short of the designer's aim, but it remains one of the most open ended games of my experience. And on top of all that, it was thought provoking.
So just because it's a FPS doesn't mean it has to be an intellectual wasteland. The trouble is that it's a lot more effort to write a game with good and witty dialogue and a strong coherent plot (Adventure or FPS) than it is to say "All hell has broken loose on mars - shoot anything that moves!"
It's the same deal as we see in Hollywood. Endless trouble taken with the visuals, because you can say "that looks good" in 5 seconds without any deep meditation. But if a lot of time and trouble is being spent without anything tangible to show for it (like thinking to make sure the plot makes sense, or rewriting dialog to make sure it rings true) then it's likely to be cut and replaced with a car chase/jumping puzzle by order of the management.
Honorable mention goes to Alice, which had a fascination beyond the eye candy and the graphics, but was let down by so many jumpy levels that I got bored before the end, and also to the original Half Life which told a good story over the course of the game, but never really made me think too hard.
Yes... but don't you think this opens the doors for all those sweeping new anti-terrorist powers that have been enacted of late to be applied to those evil masterminds who download MP3s or run bittorrent sites.
Just think, keeping the MPAA and the RIAA safe from Osama Bin Laden. I expect we'll all sleep more soundly in our beds tonight knowing all those terrorist fileshares will soon be in Guatanamo Bay...
Who is "they" in this case? Nokia? The kernel maintainers? Other non-kernal GPL coders?
The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation?
If "they" are Nokia, then "they" are not donating code, they are donating patents for the use of the Linux Kernel. No code donated means no restriction imposed.
If "they" are the collective kernel hackers, then "they" own the copyright of the code and can distribute under whatever licence they so choose. The impose no limitations beyond the GPL because none are imposed upon them.
If "they" are non kernel GPL coders then "they" can indeed use the code under the terms of the GPL. However in this case, Nokia have not promised not to sue them if they feel one of their patents has been infringed upon.
In the third case, the situation is unchanged from before Nokia donated the patents to the kernel. They have aright to the code but may yet get sued for using it under patent law.
This is, of course, what makes software patents so dangerous, since it holds the potential to make it illegal for us to profit from code we worked hard to create.
It is also an illustration of why it is so important reject the notion of "intellectual property". There are a number of different mechanisms at work here, each of which works differently. To make the mistake to lumping them under a common term is to engender confusion in your own mind when you think on the subject.
Banish the notion of intellectual property from your mind, and think clearly upon the subjects of copyright and patents. Not to mention trade secrets and whatever other mechanisms may exist to restrict the flow and/or implementation of ideas.
Alas, I don't think it's quite that straightforward. If the asteroids are a planet or two torn apart by tidal forces (which was the explanation last time I checked) then most of what's up there is likely to be nickel iron. Useful stuff, but unlikely to pay any bills on earth.
We may reasonably expect useful mineral resources, but they are going to hard to find and exploit. There is maybe 10 times the earth's mass spread out over an area substantially larger than Larry Niven's Ringworld. I don't know the exact mass, but even two jovian massess might end up spread a little thinly over all that vacuum.
To add to the complications, it's difficult to survey for these minerals. There are no orbital photos to yield clues and the plenetary geology has been shattered and distributed across the belt. The california gold rush worked because when a prospector found gold in one place, there was likely gold next door to it as well. This is not going to be a reasonable assumption in the asteroid belt.
Don't get me wrong - I think mankind's colonisation of space is essential to our long term survival. But if that effort is going to succeed, we need to understand what we are up against.
You missed out a word: Space is not profitable yet.
Really, your critique almost sounds like an update of someone's dismissal of the Wright Brother's efforts:
The Sky is never going to be profitable. People don't realise how hard it is to travel up there. If the clouds were made of cotton candy, maybe we'd have a reason to go, and if the moon were made of good cream cheese...
And yet despite the water vapour nature of the clouds in the sky and the distinct lack of dairy produce on Luna, yet is the aerospace buisiness worth billions.
I think expecting companies not to explore space is unrealistic.
Quite right. If their best argument is a threat to "take their ball and go home" they can start walking now.
Seriously, the cost of making movies isn't what it used to be. Look at the fan made matrix film that was covered on/. a while back. It cost, not billions, not millions, but thousands to make. A bunch of actors did it out of their own pockets to show off their talents.
Then there are the fans making Star Trek episodes...
Obviously there are production quality issues here. In particular SFX are still the province of the big studios. But the CGI software is getting better and cheaper, and the technology is becoming more widely understood. The day will soon come when homegrow digital effects are good enough for most if not all audiences.
Might Hollywood want to control the channel, not through fear of lost revenue, but fear of competition? Competition of comparible quality, but distributed under a copyleft licence? I think they're looking ahead to a day when they face the dilemma that faces Microsoft now: how can you possibly compete when they other guys are willing to give it away for free?
The flaw here lies in considering safe as an absolute. There is no safe method of travelling, but there are substanially more risks associated with skydiving than there are with walking.
Even apologists for MS poor security record acknowledge that firefox is more secure, if only with the argument "when more malware starts targetting it, then it will be just as bad"
And the same applies to OS security as well. Safe is a relative concept, and to try and confuse the issue by casting it as an absolute does no one any favours.
I think the word you're looking for here is "application".
Unless of course you see something immoral or unnatural in maximising information flow?
Sort of "information doesn't want to be free", something like that?
It's do-able. I remember backing up my data on my laptop when I had to reload XP, only to find it respected my lunix partitions. Kudos to Toshiba, but imagine my surprise.
I don't know how vendors can justify anything else, really.
So... windows is good because the entire system is binary only and Bill can obsolete all my code whenever he feels like it, while linux is bad because only a limited number of manufacturers have this power, and then only for a limited range of applications.
Plus, when it happens on linx, they generally try and fix it. When it happens on windows, it's marketing
I can't comment on Macs. Recompilation is not the same as recoding. If the application framework changes dramatically from what I have been led to belive, I have to recode from the ground up
That's substantially more effort than re-compiling.
I don't know much about Macs, so I'll pass on that front.
For linux, at least you can recompile. Nothing requires you to re-code, or even rewrite from scratch.
This latest trick, if true, is though Gnome were to say "Right! everything is going to be Mono in the next release", and then delayed the release untill everyone had been coding for five years or so, wt which point Miguel de Icaza suddenly says "Just Kidding! SURPRISE!"
Of course, for the situation to be truly analagous, there would have to be no KDE, FVWM, Windowmaker, XFCE, fluxbox etc to which you could turn to if you didn't like this after the third or fourth time they pulled the same stunt.
This is why I tell people that windows is a Hostile Platform. Your home grown apps may be broken by the next service pack, and you can count yourelf doubly lucky if they survive the next release of the windows.
MS seem to change things on a whim, and without a thought for people trying to maintain apps on their platforms. Anyone'd think they were the only game in town...
I wonder what the opposite is of a self fulfilling prophecy?
Installing Linux of a laptop is easy, especially with ditributions like Ubuntu. The fact that Linux comes preinstalled or not with the hardware doesn't matter IMHO.
Umm... you think so? Linux on the desktop is easy. Laptops can be challenging. Unless of course you mean just getting the binaries onto the disk. Even then its not always straightforward. I 'll always remember the fun I had once getting anaconda to work with some crappy SiS onbard graphics chip
Lapops use more custom components and working drivers are harder to come by. I'm writing this on a Tosh Satellite M30 which works perfectly - but then I did some careful reading ahead of my purchase. Even then, getting the wifi up and running was an adventure.
On the other hand, if it comes pre-installed, we should expect a decent default configuration. If not, it seems reasonable to complain to the manufacturer.
That said, I can see where you're coming from. Hey, I don't even duspute your conclusion.
Just goes to show perhaps that this particular meme is starting to spread outside the fairly narrow confines of communities like slashdot.
I'm surprised this doesn't draw more attention. I mean it wasn't that long ago that one vendor had MS threaten to withdraw their windows reseller's licence just for offering a machine with no pre-installed OS. I mean we're not even talking about support here - they went ballistic just because someone offered the consumerbase choice.
In fairness, I should say that MS have no objection to vendors offering linux systems. Just so long as they're about three times the price of the wndows equivalent, run on crappt hardware, or are otherwise deeply unappealing. It seems to help the vendor hides the machine away or refuses to admit it exists as well.
Military conservativism can also costs lives, usually at the start of a new war.
The example that springs to mind is that of regiments being mowed down on both sides at the start of WWI because neither side properly appreciated how devastating a machine gun nest could be against a regiment of riflemen marching line abreast.
It's largely unavoidable (IHM). Military regiments tend to stress tradition. It's useful to help create a necessary sense of group identity and and to maintain what in other contexts we might call the regiment's "corporate culture".
Of course, once a unit understands the need for change, things happen very fast. The question becomes how do you establish a threat as credible without spending lives to make the point?
Slashdot Mirror
At a guess, google are building a corporate strategy around the first two technologies and would like these projects to yield results that they would find useful.
Normally I dislike arguments of the form "it's their dollar so they can do what they like" but in this case, it doesn't seem to odious a restriction.
Not that this affects me in any direct manner, but does someone want to explain to me how the world will end if one or more cites be allowed to set up muni-wifi. Then you could wait a few years and compare the municipal ones with the private ones.
Then you'd have some hard evidence as to which was working better. Without data, everyone is reduced to arguing from faith, making this more of a religious flame war than a rational debate. With a health dollop of astroturfing thrown in for good measure, unless I miss my guess.
come on, it's not that much of a stretch
Umm... Who are "they" in this context? Microsoft? Sinister Minions of Eric S. Raymond? The Orbital Mind Control Lasers?
I've just got up, so forgive me if I seem a little dense. Maybe you meant to refer to those of us who support Free Software without the wholesale adoption of each and every Stallman dictum? If we can starve it of new contributors, simply because we don't like the governing mindset, maybe it's an institution whose time has come.
Actually, that's an interesting idea. I remember one slashdotter explaining AOLs latest downturn by suggesting that AOL represented an intermediary phase; that it was internet lite for americans who were interested in this internet thing, but who were used to more the structured world of television. For these people AOL provided a useful halfway house between TV and the anarchic decentralisation of the internet.
The downside of that, of course, was that as those AOL customers came to understand that the internet could and should be, so they came first to chafe under the restrictions imposed by AOL, and then to seek new IPSs.
Perhaps we may then speculate that the GNU Project too may be an intermediate phase - Free Software Lite, if you will. If GNU can be starved of developers in the manner you suggest, perhaps that's because people who understand the idea of free software are now starting to chafe under the weight of groupthink mandated by the GNU orthodoxy.
Just a thought...
Lovely! Mind you, I didn't complain about Stallman teleporting into my home everytime I utter the incantation "Linux! Linux! Linux!" Rather, a poster asked why people insisted on badgering Stallman, and I offered a very personal opinion of how the great man aquired Feet of Clay in my mind. You are of course free to accept this information, ignore it, or attack me for holding it.
Nevertheless, to the extent you choose to consider my opinion, I'd ask you to consider it in context.
That isn't what Stallman says. I expect he should know, right? This is from hios slashdot interview:
That sounds like he's telling me what I should call it.
Never would have occurred to me, personally.
Not that he's letting his personal dislike of Linus' apolitical stance colour his perceptions or anything.See, he says things like this, and it sounds to me like his love of freedom comes second to his love of the spotlight.
2) he won't sue you if you call it different
Oh well, that's all right then. Really, I don't like having branding forced down my throat. Neither by Gates, nor by Stallman, thank you very much.
4) if you think of something similar as GNU, you can call it anyway you want.
Cute, but it misses the point. I'm not telling him anything. He on the other hand is is tellimg me waht I should call a system that uses software he intended to be used freely by others.
Stallman is a great man in many ways. But on this one specific point, he should practice what he preaches a little more rigorously. Such pettiness is unbecoming for a man of his stature.
You want to know? Personally speaking, he lost a lot of my sympathy when he started insisting on tagging GNU on the front of Linux. If this is "free as in speech", why the merry hell is he telling me how I may and may not refer to the operating system I use.
I read an interview where he said the only reason was that it provided an "educational opportunity". I could respect that if he insisted on Linux/GNU. On the other hand, his continuing insistence on first billing smacks of a personal dislike of Linus, and of sour grapes regarding the marginalisation of the GNU Hurd.
I won't dispute the good Stallman's done, but really, he does himself no favours sometimes.
Personally, I've yet to seean article that says "I want stupider monsters, more ammo starvation, I don't think I pay enough per minute for my MMOGs, nd every game in the world should be a post-apocalype first person shooter". Of course, that may say more about the sites I read than it does about by gamer consensus.
So what would be really useful for this discussion would be if, rather than just disagreeing, you told us what you disagreed with and why and what you'd prefer in its place.
That way the community gets a chance see if your preferences resonate more strongly with their own experience.
DeusEx managed to be a good FP shooter/sneaker depending on your choice of strategy. It fell somewhat short of the designer's aim, but it remains one of the most open ended games of my experience. And on top of all that, it was thought provoking.
So just because it's a FPS doesn't mean it has to be an intellectual wasteland. The trouble is that it's a lot more effort to write a game with good and witty dialogue and a strong coherent plot (Adventure or FPS) than it is to say "All hell has broken loose on mars - shoot anything that moves!"
It's the same deal as we see in Hollywood. Endless trouble taken with the visuals, because you can say "that looks good" in 5 seconds without any deep meditation. But if a lot of time and trouble is being spent without anything tangible to show for it (like thinking to make sure the plot makes sense, or rewriting dialog to make sure it rings true) then it's likely to be cut and replaced with a car chase/jumping puzzle by order of the management.
Honorable mention goes to Alice, which had a fascination beyond the eye candy and the graphics, but was let down by so many jumpy levels that I got bored before the end, and also to the original Half Life which told a good story over the course of the game, but never really made me think too hard.
Just think, keeping the MPAA and the RIAA safe from Osama Bin Laden. I expect we'll all sleep more soundly in our beds tonight knowing all those terrorist fileshares will soon be in Guatanamo Bay...
If "they" are Nokia, then "they" are not donating code, they are donating patents for the use of the Linux Kernel. No code donated means no restriction imposed.
If "they" are the collective kernel hackers, then "they" own the copyright of the code and can distribute under whatever licence they so choose. The impose no limitations beyond the GPL because none are imposed upon them.
If "they" are non kernel GPL coders then "they" can indeed use the code under the terms of the GPL. However in this case, Nokia have not promised not to sue them if they feel one of their patents has been infringed upon.
In the third case, the situation is unchanged from before Nokia donated the patents to the kernel. They have aright to the code but may yet get sued for using it under patent law.
This is, of course, what makes software patents so dangerous, since it holds the potential to make it illegal for us to profit from code we worked hard to create.
It is also an illustration of why it is so important reject the notion of "intellectual property". There are a number of different mechanisms at work here, each of which works differently. To make the mistake to lumping them under a common term is to engender confusion in your own mind when you think on the subject.
Banish the notion of intellectual property from your mind, and think clearly upon the subjects of copyright and patents. Not to mention trade secrets and whatever other mechanisms may exist to restrict the flow and/or implementation of ideas.
We may reasonably expect useful mineral resources, but they are going to hard to find and exploit. There is maybe 10 times the earth's mass spread out over an area substantially larger than Larry Niven's Ringworld. I don't know the exact mass, but even two jovian massess might end up spread a little thinly over all that vacuum.
To add to the complications, it's difficult to survey for these minerals. There are no orbital photos to yield clues and the plenetary geology has been shattered and distributed across the belt. The california gold rush worked because when a prospector found gold in one place, there was likely gold next door to it as well. This is not going to be a reasonable assumption in the asteroid belt.
Don't get me wrong - I think mankind's colonisation of space is essential to our long term survival. But if that effort is going to succeed, we need to understand what we are up against.
You missed out a word: Space is not profitable yet.
Really, your critique almost sounds like an update of someone's dismissal of the Wright Brother's efforts:
And yet despite the water vapour nature of the clouds in the sky and the distinct lack of dairy produce on Luna, yet is the aerospace buisiness worth billions.
I think expecting companies not to explore space is unrealistic.
Seriously, the cost of making movies isn't what it used to be. Look at the fan made matrix film that was covered on /. a while back. It cost, not billions, not millions, but thousands to make. A bunch of actors did it out of their own pockets to show off their talents.
Then there are the fans making Star Trek episodes...
Obviously there are production quality issues here. In particular SFX are still the province of the big studios. But the CGI software is getting better and cheaper, and the technology is becoming more widely understood. The day will soon come when homegrow digital effects are good enough for most if not all audiences.
Might Hollywood want to control the channel, not through fear of lost revenue, but fear of competition? Competition of comparible quality, but distributed under a copyleft licence? I think they're looking ahead to a day when they face the dilemma that faces Microsoft now: how can you possibly compete when they other guys are willing to give it away for free?
Even apologists for MS poor security record acknowledge that firefox is more secure, if only with the argument "when more malware starts targetting it, then it will be just as bad"
And the same applies to OS security as well. Safe is a relative concept, and to try and confuse the issue by casting it as an absolute does no one any favours.
I think the word you're looking for here is "application".
Unless of course you see something immoral or unnatural in maximising information flow? Sort of "information doesn't want to be free", something like that?
Fancy explaining how that works?
I don't know how vendors can justify anything else, really.
Plus, when it happens on linx, they generally try and fix it. When it happens on windows, it's marketing
That's substantially more effort than re-compiling.
For linux, at least you can recompile. Nothing requires you to re-code, or even rewrite from scratch.
This latest trick, if true, is though Gnome were to say "Right! everything is going to be Mono in the next release", and then delayed the release untill everyone had been coding for five years or so, wt which point Miguel de Icaza suddenly says "Just Kidding! SURPRISE!"
Of course, for the situation to be truly analagous, there would have to be no KDE, FVWM, Windowmaker, XFCE, fluxbox etc to which you could turn to if you didn't like this after the third or fourth time they pulled the same stunt.
Just a few minor quibbles
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=meme
MS seem to change things on a whim, and without a thought for people trying to maintain apps on their platforms. Anyone'd think they were the only game in town...
I wonder what the opposite is of a self fulfilling prophecy?
Umm... you think so? Linux on the desktop is easy. Laptops can be challenging. Unless of course you mean just getting the binaries onto the disk. Even then its not always straightforward. I 'll always remember the fun I had once getting anaconda to work with some crappy SiS onbard graphics chip
Lapops use more custom components and working drivers are harder to come by. I'm writing this on a Tosh Satellite M30 which works perfectly - but then I did some careful reading ahead of my purchase. Even then, getting the wifi up and running was an adventure.
On the other hand, if it comes pre-installed, we should expect a decent default configuration. If not, it seems reasonable to complain to the manufacturer.
That said, I can see where you're coming from. Hey, I don't even duspute your conclusion.
I'm surprised this doesn't draw more attention. I mean it wasn't that long ago that one vendor had MS threaten to withdraw their windows reseller's licence just for offering a machine with no pre-installed OS. I mean we're not even talking about support here - they went ballistic just because someone offered the consumerbase choice.
In fairness, I should say that MS have no objection to vendors offering linux systems. Just so long as they're about three times the price of the wndows equivalent, run on crappt hardware, or are otherwise deeply unappealing. It seems to help the vendor hides the machine away or refuses to admit it exists as well.
Military conservativism can also costs lives, usually at the start of a new war.
The example that springs to mind is that of regiments being mowed down on both sides at the start of WWI because neither side properly appreciated how devastating a machine gun nest could be against a regiment of riflemen marching line abreast.
It's largely unavoidable (IHM). Military regiments tend to stress tradition. It's useful to help create a necessary sense of group identity and and to maintain what in other contexts we might call the regiment's "corporate culture".
Of course, once a unit understands the need for change, things happen very fast. The question becomes how do you establish a threat as credible without spending lives to make the point?