This actually happens, as the increase in temperature causing ground soil to give up more C02. This is why it is an accelerating trend. That trend ends at Venus.
The trend ends at Venus? According to the article, it already reversed once, and that was shortly after the Middle Ages.
First, the UN implies that carbon dioxide ended the last four ice ages. It displays two 450,000-year graphs: a sawtooth curve of temperature and a sawtooth of airborne CO2 that's scaled to look similar. Usually, similar curves are superimposed for comparison. The UN didn't do that. If it had, the truth would have shown: the changes in temperature preceded the changes in CO2 levels.
So historically speaking, it doesn't look like it's necessarily a self-perpetuating time-bomb -- it sounds like it's happened before, and it can happen again.
As many may know, one can play Nethack on a publicly-viewable server at nethack.alt.org. There is also a group project to play through and obtain as many unique deaths in Nethack as possible on a shared account called DeathRobin. For the curious, one can check on his progress here. The character was started as one of several shared accounts on the IRC channel #nethack on the Freenode network.
I would guess that Cheapy was addressing the level of maturity used in your post, not the level of political (in)correctness.
(hence the "grow up" comment, rather than something more like "respect my rights as a minority!")
Also, you know that although this was a Halo-themed mod, that it wasn't a mod of the Halo game, right? It has nothing to do with using Microsoft's tools to create a mod -- this deals explicitly with the issue of using Halo characters to create a separate work (in another company's engine to boot). It's like using Disney characters to create a large series of Flash animations that you're planning to release for free on the web -- if you draw enough attention to yourself and you breach trademark (this is trademark, not copyright law), then you're going to get shut down (especially if you don't ask permission, or have prior permission like Star Wars fan-filmers do from Lucas and Paramount).
As a dedicated player of Eve, have you ever destroyed or helped to destroy someone else's ship? Do you think it hurt their enjoyment to destroy something they've worked hard to get? Why do you think it's moral to hurt the enjoyment of other players in this way, but it's not moral the other way?
Maybe you're asking a rhetorical question, but I'll bite and explain why it's different.
When you take someone into your confidence, and then betray them, is that worse than just being an outright enemy? For instance, was Brutus or Judas any worse of an enemy to Julius Caesar or Jesus Christ than the people who didn't hide their intentions of killing them?
To answer my own question -- yes. Spies and traitors are worse than normal enemies -- even in war. It's not uncommon for spies and traitors to even be despised by those to whom they are truly allied.
So if traitors are dealt with this way in war time where "all is fair", of course con men are going to be considered more putrid than common thieves and pirates -- games or not.
Sorry, I tried to reply to this last night but the power went out.
Anyhow, you compare the GPL to enforced communism. That's a ridiculously extreme example. Enforced communism takes everyone in an entire country, and via threat of physical violence, forces them to give up what they've created, earned, and done. The GPL is completely optional. You don't have to link with any GPL libraries, or modify any GPL programs.
While I certainly don't say anything close to "Stallman" == "Stalin", what I mean is that people promoting the GPL advertise freedom and what you wind up with is encumberence. People promoting Communism say that if we all just join in together it will be fantastic -- well it's just not true -- that's not how freedom works.
As I said in my original post, I do support the GPL by contributing to GPL projects -- but as has been stated elsewhere in this/. discussion, there is a proper use of the GPL and there is an improper use. Making attractive middle-ware that is GPL-only is not trying to be helpful to the community -- it's trying to proselytise and it's bribing people in order to do it. It's like giving people money to go to church -- trying to get people in the door because that somehow counts as "converting" them. No -- baiting people into using GPL middleware isn't the way to win them over. It just makes them frustrated and annoyed when they have to deal with the frustrations the GPL brings -- just like it makes the people baited into church annoyed when they have to sit through a boring sermon. That's not the way to evangelise religion -- whether for Jesus or the GPL. GPL != freedom -- it's restrictions in response to other restrictions created by copyright law. It's a social protest. And it bugs the heck out of me when people sell the GPL as freedom, because I've never felt less free than when having to work with merging GPL code into non-GPL code. I don't know that I've ever worked with a software license that has made so many far-reaching demands onto code that links together with it. If I'm writing a game I can't even include a GPL'd math library into my code to calculate some three-dimensional matrix calculation without having to make sure that I can also open up my rendering code and my networking library and all of my graphical vertex shaders and every other piece of code that links (however remotely) with that single silly vector transformation function.
You call that freedom? If it's freedom, and I'm supposedly free under it, then I don't feel very free there. I feel constricted and hassled. I feel baited-and-switched.
However, if it is as you say, a contract that I willingly enter as part of a worldwide protest against copyright law -- then fine. Please call it that, and I'll use it as such. But please don't try to sell it to me as some sort of utopian freedom, or bait me into it with shiny libraries that I "can have full use of if only I sell all of my source code to the GPL". Call it what it is, but it's not complete freedom.
Does that explain my frustrations a little better? Am I still being unreasonable? I like the GPL, I use the GPL, but I'm frustrated and annoyed with how people sell it as freedom when it is not.
Are you playing with semantics? The original parent didn't say *tool* he said application.
I wasn't replying to the original parent, I was replying to the guy who was talking about wanting to ensure that a tool would be useful to others for a long while to come.
...and royalty-based a proprietary library is useless unless you're working on other proprietary code. Does that not bother you?
But the developers of the proprietary library don't force me to use their license if I link to their code. There are many pay-to-use libraries that I can include as dynamically-linked pre-compiled DLLs with my programs, and I can choose whether or not to make make my own program open-source despite having a dependency on a proprietary library. That is not a freedom that I have when using a GPL library.
So to answer your original question -- you're right -- proprietary libraries aren't always number one choice. Sometimes they are, but often they're not. So this is why I have yet to willingly use Trolltech's QT product on a project, because they only offer the two extremes ($2000 per developer, or GPL'd), and why I support GTK. I realize QT is prettier, has better docs, and is more mature -- but it is so frustrating to work with the licensing that I have cast my lot in with the good folks at Gnome.
"Consider the case that you are creating a tool and your goal is to ensure its always available as a service to the community."
The OP is is saying exactly that the GPL does not line up with this set of goals. If I'm trying to make a *tool* that will always be available, then I will use the LGPL because that *tool* will always be available and usable.
By a developer making his libraries "free" only under the GPL (and not a more free license like the MIT/BSD or even LGPL), then he's forcing anyone that wants to use this shiny tool to also make their software free under the same restrictions. That is why the GPL is "viral" -- not because it "infects" any software that it is stored next to -- but rather because GPL code is useless unless you're working on other GPL'd code.
Sometimes the GPL feels about as enjoyable as enforced communism to me.
I just don't feel very "free" when working under the GPL (and I have contributed to several GPL projects). It's just that something more along the lines of the LGPL would be my license of choice when creating a tool that I want to be available and free and useful to others for many years to come.
If anything that I've said is a myth, then please debunk it -- I would genuinely appreciate it.
Wait, you don't care for MySpace, but you want to read comments about it? Why?
Is that a serious question? I'll assume it is and answer your question as such.
As a developer on the Internet, I need to be aware of what's going on if I want to "keep with the times". I don't like MSN or Yahoo! either, but that doesn't mean as a Google freak I'm going to bury my head in the sand and ignore that very large chunk of the Internet. I want to understand the current movements on the 'net and what's hot, what's declining, what works, what doesn't, etc. MySpace is *incredibly* popular, and as much as I personally detest a lot of what's on there, I can't ignore it without shooting myself (as a developer) in the proverbial foot.
Enough with the backslash, we know how to read at +4 already.
I guess, but there's this little thing called "mod points", and so I try to browse at +0 so that I can help get rid of annoying trolls, redundant un-funnies, and Nazi propoganda. As much as I'd like to re-set my browsing settings each time I want to read a MySpace story, I just don't have the patience for it. I like the BackSlash summary, I like Timothy's interposed comments, and I like Slashdot.
*walks off muttering "don't feed the trolls... don't feed the trolls..."*
I'm very happy with the two BackSlash stories that I've read this week. I don't hold MySpace in high regard, and so trolling through hundreds of Slashdot comments about the story yesterday was not something I was willing to do. This BackSlash let me partake of the discussion without *totally* ignoring work for the hours it would have taken to distill this summary myself, and I really appreciate that.
Thanks, Timothy! You're like a secretary preparing an executive summary for an on-the-go Slashdot reader like myself. It makes me feel all important and stuff.:)
The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors."
So wait, so under these rules, it sounds like Tetris, Chess and Checkers are all illegal to sell directly to minors? Unless you count the gameplay logic involved in Checkers to be "scientific", which is a bit of a stretch of the bill's apparent wording.
Is stuff like this being taken into account I wonder?
One Python library that I've enjoyed good success with is Phil's pyGame Utilities (PGU). It has support for square, isometric, and hex tiling. It's very easy to program in, and has been consistently actively developed for as long as I've been using it, which is about 6 months.
Bempu is a pretty good game that my wife and I have enjoyed playing. It's like pinball, but with many more people.:) While not explicitly cooperative, it's not overly competitive either.
I think you need two computers to play together though -- my wife and I don't mind, since we both have our laptops, but that might not fit most people's criteria. We like using laptops together because we can sit together on the couch.:)
Regarding the larger question, multiplayer Unreal Tournament might be a pretty decent fit for players of varied skill levels. I know that when my wife and I host LAN parties, I don't tone down my playing but just because of how we balance the teams, she gets to have a good time and I do too.
Tiggles, I look forward to tracking your list as it continues grow!
Why does every game like that have to be riddled with scantily clad females? Sheesh. You'd think if you lived in a place with sandstorms and hostile chemicals, you would wear at least a t-shirt that didn't have holes all through it.
Nothing that I've found yet seems to be a good stepping-stone to migrate away from oodles of code written in C++ Kylix. Lazarus is great if you wrote your Kylix apps in Pascal, but for people tied to C++, it's not a happy situation. We finally opted for a split solution in the form of KDevelop+QTDesigner for some stuff, and to C#+GTK# for some other stuff, but I'd love to hear what other peoples migration experiences have been. None of these free IDEs offer quite what Kylix did in terms of ease-of-use, RAD and cross-platformability.
Is game-writing the educated-geeks choice of creativity, another pasttime like knitting, a band, amateur dramatics, etc?
It certainly is for me. I consider myself an artist, and code is my medium. It's relaxing for me to write code and design systems -- it's somewhat therapeutic. It's my way to be creative, and what I enjoy doing to get out some good energy (even though I may do it all day as a job).
I agree with the (serious interpretation) of the parent comment. It was a shockingly good review, and while I appreciate my Debian box, this helps me feel a little bit better as a developer working for a Windows-only company.
Thanks, Mr. Nash! I hope that you do get to follow through with that man-from-the-trenches -- if you're really a VP like that, then I'm seriously impressed. Props!
That's really cool about the Labyrinth game -- it would be cool if Neverball were modified to use a similar input device. It works off of a similar principle, the graphics are fantastic, and it would be sortof an open-source Revolution controller.:)
Well, JavaMoose, *I* thought it was pretty cool.:)
I've got one of those old radiation meters sitting on my shelf at home next to my plasma ball.
I originally thought mine was a Geiger counter, but sadly it's just a very high level radiation meter. Do you know if yours was a radiation meter or one that actually operated in Geiger mode?
The tube on mine is blown, so right now it just looks cool and doesn't do much other than peg the needle when I turn it on (simulated "we're all gonna' die!" mode).
Technically, I'm just wondering if it's a true Geiger counter or just an old surplus radiation meter (either way, it's still very cool!).
Regardless, props! I enjoyed the pictures, and think it was a good project, worthy of cannibalizing a fairly worthless surplus relic of the cold-war era.:)
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but iirc uranium won't dissolve in your stomach acids, much less the more benign fluids in your body, so if ingested in powder form, it would simply pass (relatively) harmlessly through your system.
I believe the same applies for plutonium (in that it's undissolvable by the stomach acids)
Like I said, please correct me if I'm wrong. I checked an msds sheet for uranium powder, but the only thing I could sort out was that it has similar side effects of irradiation. It's not clear to me from that sheet whether the body can absorb the metal from its powder form or not.
Slashdot Mirror
The trend ends at Venus? According to the article, it already reversed once, and that was shortly after the Middle Ages.
So historically speaking, it doesn't look like it's necessarily a self-perpetuating time-bomb -- it sounds like it's happened before, and it can happen again.
As many may know, one can play Nethack on a publicly-viewable server at nethack.alt.org. There is also a group project to play through and obtain as many unique deaths in Nethack as possible on a shared account called DeathRobin. For the curious, one can check on his progress here. The character was started as one of several shared accounts on the IRC channel #nethack on the Freenode network.
I would guess that Cheapy was addressing the level of maturity used in your post, not the level of political (in)correctness.
:)
(hence the "grow up" comment, rather than something more like "respect my rights as a minority!")
Also, you know that although this was a Halo-themed mod, that it wasn't a mod of the Halo game, right? It has nothing to do with using Microsoft's tools to create a mod -- this deals explicitly with the issue of using Halo characters to create a separate work (in another company's engine to boot). It's like using Disney characters to create a large series of Flash animations that you're planning to release for free on the web -- if you draw enough attention to yourself and you breach trademark (this is trademark, not copyright law), then you're going to get shut down (especially if you don't ask permission, or have prior permission like Star Wars fan-filmers do from Lucas and Paramount).
Oh, and hi Cheapy -- long time no see.
Maybe you're asking a rhetorical question, but I'll bite and explain why it's different.
When you take someone into your confidence, and then betray them, is that worse than just being an outright enemy? For instance, was Brutus or Judas any worse of an enemy to Julius Caesar or Jesus Christ than the people who didn't hide their intentions of killing them?
To answer my own question -- yes. Spies and traitors are worse than normal enemies -- even in war. It's not uncommon for spies and traitors to even be despised by those to whom they are truly allied.
So if traitors are dealt with this way in war time where "all is fair", of course con men are going to be considered more putrid than common thieves and pirates -- games or not.
While I certainly don't say anything close to "Stallman" == "Stalin", what I mean is that people promoting the GPL advertise freedom and what you wind up with is encumberence. People promoting Communism say that if we all just join in together it will be fantastic -- well it's just not true -- that's not how freedom works.
As I said in my original post, I do support the GPL by contributing to GPL projects -- but as has been stated elsewhere in this
You call that freedom? If it's freedom, and I'm supposedly free under it, then I don't feel very free there. I feel constricted and hassled. I feel baited-and-switched.
However, if it is as you say, a contract that I willingly enter as part of a worldwide protest against copyright law -- then fine. Please call it that, and I'll use it as such. But please don't try to sell it to me as some sort of utopian freedom, or bait me into it with shiny libraries that I "can have full use of if only I sell all of my source code to the GPL". Call it what it is, but it's not complete freedom.
Does that explain my frustrations a little better? Am I still being unreasonable? I like the GPL, I use the GPL, but I'm frustrated and annoyed with how people sell it as freedom when it is not.
I wasn't replying to the original parent, I was replying to the guy who was talking about wanting to ensure that a tool would be useful to others for a long while to come.
So no -- no semantics.
So to answer your original question -- you're right -- proprietary libraries aren't always number one choice. Sometimes they are, but often they're not. So this is why I have yet to willingly use Trolltech's QT product on a project, because they only offer the two extremes ($2000 per developer, or GPL'd), and why I support GTK. I realize QT is prettier, has better docs, and is more mature -- but it is so frustrating to work with the licensing that I have cast my lot in with the good folks at Gnome.
The OP is is saying exactly that the GPL does not line up with this set of goals. If I'm trying to make a *tool* that will always be available, then I will use the LGPL because that *tool* will always be available and usable.
By a developer making his libraries "free" only under the GPL (and not a more free license like the MIT/BSD or even LGPL), then he's forcing anyone that wants to use this shiny tool to also make their software free under the same restrictions. That is why the GPL is "viral" -- not because it "infects" any software that it is stored next to -- but rather because GPL code is useless unless you're working on other GPL'd code.
Sometimes the GPL feels about as enjoyable as enforced communism to me.
I just don't feel very "free" when working under the GPL (and I have contributed to several GPL projects). It's just that something more along the lines of the LGPL would be my license of choice when creating a tool that I want to be available and free and useful to others for many years to come.
If anything that I've said is a myth, then please debunk it -- I would genuinely appreciate it.
--clint
Is that a serious question? I'll assume it is and answer your question as such.
As a developer on the Internet, I need to be aware of what's going on if I want to "keep with the times". I don't like MSN or Yahoo! either, but that doesn't mean as a Google freak I'm going to bury my head in the sand and ignore that very large chunk of the Internet. I want to understand the current movements on the 'net and what's hot, what's declining, what works, what doesn't, etc. MySpace is *incredibly* popular, and as much as I personally detest a lot of what's on there, I can't ignore it without shooting myself (as a developer) in the proverbial foot.
Enough with the backslash, we know how to read at +4 already.
I guess, but there's this little thing called "mod points", and so I try to browse at +0 so that I can help get rid of annoying trolls, redundant un-funnies, and Nazi propoganda. As much as I'd like to re-set my browsing settings each time I want to read a MySpace story, I just don't have the patience for it. I like the BackSlash summary, I like Timothy's interposed comments, and I like Slashdot.
*walks off muttering "don't feed the trolls... don't feed the trolls..."*
I'm very happy with the two BackSlash stories that I've read this week. I don't hold MySpace in high regard, and so trolling through hundreds of Slashdot comments about the story yesterday was not something I was willing to do. This BackSlash let me partake of the discussion without *totally* ignoring work for the hours it would have taken to distill this summary myself, and I really appreciate that.
:)
Thanks, Timothy! You're like a secretary preparing an executive summary for an on-the-go Slashdot reader like myself. It makes me feel all important and stuff.
More cowbell!
Aaaah, that makes more sense -- thanks!
So wait, so under these rules, it sounds like Tetris, Chess and Checkers are all illegal to sell directly to minors? Unless you count the gameplay logic involved in Checkers to be "scientific", which is a bit of a stretch of the bill's apparent wording.
Is stuff like this being taken into account I wonder?
--clint
Cheers!
--clint
Looks like a great start to a list, thanks!
Bempu is a pretty good game that my wife and I have enjoyed playing. It's like pinball, but with many more people. :) While not explicitly cooperative, it's not overly competitive either.
I think you need two computers to play together though -- my wife and I don't mind, since we both have our laptops, but that might not fit most people's criteria. We like using laptops together because we can sit together on the couch. :)
Regarding the larger question, multiplayer Unreal Tournament might be a pretty decent fit for players of varied skill levels. I know that when my wife and I host LAN parties, I don't tone down my playing but just because of how we balance the teams, she gets to have a good time and I do too.
Tiggles, I look forward to tracking your list as it continues grow!
Whoa, looks sweet.
Why does every game like that have to be riddled with scantily clad females? Sheesh. You'd think if you lived in a place with sandstorms and hostile chemicals, you would wear at least a t-shirt that didn't have holes all through it.
Other than that, looks like a good game!
I think I would pay money to see Kylix open-sourced.
Nothing that I've found yet seems to be a good stepping-stone to migrate away from oodles of code written in C++ Kylix. Lazarus is great if you wrote your Kylix apps in Pascal, but for people tied to C++, it's not a happy situation. We finally opted for a split solution in the form of KDevelop+QTDesigner for some stuff, and to C#+GTK# for some other stuff, but I'd love to hear what other peoples migration experiences have been. None of these free IDEs offer quite what Kylix did in terms of ease-of-use, RAD and cross-platformability.
Yeah, I read it that way too. Ah well.
Perhaps it won't be as bad as people might fear. He *has* done good stuff, despite what the PA crowd might say.
It certainly is for me. I consider myself an artist, and code is my medium. It's relaxing for me to write code and design systems -- it's somewhat therapeutic. It's my way to be creative, and what I enjoy doing to get out some good energy (even though I may do it all day as a job).
This was modded funny?
I agree with the (serious interpretation) of the parent comment. It was a shockingly good review, and while I appreciate my Debian box, this helps me feel a little bit better as a developer working for a Windows-only company.
Thanks, Mr. Nash! I hope that you do get to follow through with that man-from-the-trenches -- if you're really a VP like that, then I'm seriously impressed. Props!
--clint
That's really cool about the Labyrinth game -- it would be cool if Neverball were modified to use a similar input device. It works off of a similar principle, the graphics are fantastic, and it would be sortof an open-source Revolution controller. :)
Well, JavaMoose, *I* thought it was pretty cool. :)
:)
I've got one of those old radiation meters sitting on my shelf at home next to my plasma ball.
I originally thought mine was a Geiger counter, but sadly it's just a very high level radiation meter. Do you know if yours was a radiation meter or one that actually operated in Geiger mode?
The tube on mine is blown, so right now it just looks cool and doesn't do much other than peg the needle when I turn it on (simulated "we're all gonna' die!" mode).
Technically, I'm just wondering if it's a true Geiger counter or just an old surplus radiation meter (either way, it's still very cool!).
Regardless, props! I enjoyed the pictures, and think it was a good project, worthy of cannibalizing a fairly worthless surplus relic of the cold-war era.
--clint
I believe the same applies for plutonium (in that it's undissolvable by the stomach acids)
Like I said, please correct me if I'm wrong. I checked an msds sheet for uranium powder, but the only thing I could sort out was that it has similar side effects of irradiation. It's not clear to me from that sheet whether the body can absorb the metal from its powder form or not.
Cheers!
--clint