While the theory is sound, I don't think this analogy actually holds for geeky types. Most boardgaming fanatics seem to have have moved on to German strategy games and US block games. Interestingly, go is the only older game to make it into the boardgamegeek.com top 50:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/browser.php?itemtype= game&sortby=rank
Chess comes in at a respectable 190, Risk at 2445, and Monopoly at 2914.
If you want to play old boardgames / wargames PBEM style, check out Cyberboard. It has an OGRE / GEV module, as well as modules for many other games (ASL, 18xx, Columbia block games etc.).
I agree with you, and the comment was intended as discussional grist ('some people' in the abstract) rather than an attack ('some people' == you). Sorry if it came off that way.
"So every unit sold for homebrew modding for Linux, or modding for running pirated titles, is a financial loss, since it won't have any game sales to offset the loss and turn a profit."
You know what's an even bigger loss, both financially and in a PR sense? An unsold unit. I can't believe the doublethink some people go through to justify buying an MS product.
However, on projects where there are multiple developers and maintainers, is dynamic typing a hindrance? I suppose it comes down to if you document thoroughly what comes in and out of a function/class. Anyone have any thoughts on this? I'm curious
You can minimise this problem by having strict naming conventions for variables, objects, methods etc that give hints to type and scope. For example:
fDoStuff( aiAmount ) takes an integer argument and returns a float
lsName is a local string holding a name
Then just make sure that any explicit casting ends with assignment to an appropriately named thing, e.g lfAmount = (float) aiAmount + Math.PI
And you can confim that conventions are being adhered to by running completed source files through a script full of arcane regular expressions. Hours of fun! Or use a strongly typed language.
"...do you group your books by color or by topic? Especially the O'Reilly books... does the Sendmail one go in your "mail server" books? Does the pink Python book go next to the pink CVS book or next to the red and white Ruby book? Decisions decisions!"
As a truly tragic geek, I order mine (using spine colour) by the electromagnetic spectrum. So Programming PHP (green) goes before Programming Perl (blue), etc.
But... is this product even safe? I'm not an organic chemist by any means, but it seems to me that you'd want to do a significant amount of testing on any new compound to make sure that it's not going to have any long-term negative effects.
Don't worry, they'll do some animal testing and the FDA will pass it. Like with thalidomide.
Then you don't understand the tenants of classic liberalism
Well, I'm sincere but fallible -- perhaps not the best landlord material, but certainly far from the worst. What do you consider the tenets of classic liberalism, and would you say that the US government has consistently upheld them, bearing in mind such shining moments as the Vietnam war (featuring the draft), McCarthyism, the bipartisan support for the Patriot act, Guantanamo Bay, the opposition to free speech from Tipper Gore and others, the lack of separation between church and state etc?
To me, the liberal philosophy stems from the idea of natural rights, where the freedom and dignity of the individual is paramount: free speech, freedom of religion, representation, rule of law (including the classical liberal concept of property), freedom of movement etc. That's the sum of it, really. Then from that it splits off into the various modern and contemporary interpretations of liberalism: socialism, communism, libertarianism, syndicalism, anarchism etc, and I suspect that this is where our opinions diverge. Anyway, my point in the context of the article and our original posts is that I don't consider political parties who advocate censorship to be liberal, given that free speech is a natural right and a tenet of classical liberalism.
Many people on Slashdot would consider libertarianism to be classically liberal. I don't know whether this is your view or not, but I don't consider libertarianism to be classically liberal, because a) it puts the rights of property (for which read individuals owning property) over the rights of people, and b) it favours user-pays access to social services (health, education, transport), which again leads to the wealthy having more rights than the poor (unnatural rights based on property). As you can probably infer from my original post, I consider equal access to services based on proportional taxation to be truer to classical liberalism.
I couldn't say which of the other recent isms most closely fits my conception of liberalism. Probably anarchism in the Chomsky sense rather than the black bloc sense, although it seems to have something of an image problem and to be adverse to reform (which is another thing I consider liberal). Reform (rather than revolution or edict) is a liberal ideal to me, because it is relatively low impact -- you're not going to hear of x thousand deaths due to gradual planned change as you might with the other two.
or just don't believe in them, but since all intelligent and open-minded people are liberal, whatever you believe has to be liberal too [...] You're right on about 2/3 of those in terms of what the notion of "liberalism" is supposed to be about.
Are you making the same assumptions here? Obviously since you can identify which of my criteria are right and wrong, whatever you believe to be truly liberal must be infallibly so, right?
I am not an American, and I concede that the term liberal has various meanings in various countries (consider the Australian Liberal party, who are basically right-wing christians). Chomsky, who I mentioned earlier as an example of what I consider liberal, doesn't identify himself as a liberal because he considers the term to have been watered down (by the Democrats among others) in US political discourse. In that particular sense (liberal = centrism in the Democratic mode), I am not liberal, but as I stated earlier, IMO liberal != Democrat (and vice versa).
A computer game you buy and play privately in your home is one thing, but broadcast television is in some way public behavior, because of its wide exposure. Wide release movies are similar as well.
Dude, I know! If only there were some sort of ratings system to let parents know about the content of TV and movies before plonking their kids in front of the screen!
While you're out campaigning for that, see if you can get the powers that be to attach a recommended age to the ratings, so that parents can see at a glance whether the content is appropriate for their kids. This could totally revolutionise child-rearing, while still allowing grown-ups to view boobies if they so desire. Get cracking.
I would have agreed with you a year or two ago -- RE 0 through 3 really were beating a dead horse. But having just played through Resident Evil 4, I think there's a lot of life left in the franchise. Since you seem to have missed it, I'll fill you in.
RE4 is set in an anonymous Spanish speaking country (often outdoors), and rather than zombies, it pits you against some decidedly Cthuloid enemies. The controls are finally functional (you can run, spin around, aim properly etc), and the inventory and ammo system has been fixed up (reloading is a matter of pressing a button).
In play, it feels a more like an FPS game than a surival horror title. There's plenty of sniping, some rail shooter levels, and even some rhythm-based hand to hand combat. There's also a bit of light RPG stuff in there: upgradable weapons, multiple paths, side quests etc.
Of course, you will need a GameCube to play it, and they're just for kids*, right?
(*for which read 'people with at least a 3rd grade education')
Yes, just like them. Democrat != liberal, and in fact the US Democrats are considered right wing in the rest of the western world. They might be a little less right wing than Bush, but if they're pushing for the enshrinement of fundamentalist christian 'morals' in legislation, they're definitely both conservative and unreasonable.
When I think liberal, I think no censorship, decriminalised drug use, free speech (inclusive of flag burning etc), right to trial, right to religious belief or lack thereof (including islam and atheism), sexual freedom, universal health care and education, heavy regulation of business, a pacifist foreign policy etc. I don't think the US has ever even come close to that.
La Jetee is a great shortish film that every science fiction fan should see (in the original French, if possible). The Hollwood movie 12 Monkeys is based on La Jetee, but as is usually the case, the original is the best. La Jetee is also commonly cited as an influence on The Terminator, and on time travel movies in general. I was flipping through an old New Worlds magazine the other night and found a review of La Jetee by J.G. Ballard in which he describes it as the most realistic example of time travel ever shown on screen. Forty years later, I'd say that's still the case.
It's not too difficult to dig up a copy of La Jetee. There are two DVD versions and one VHS version, each with different cuts and language setup. The most recent DVD version is a region 2 PAL double feature with Sans Soleil, and you can get it from Amazon UK (ref. free link).
Well, you're certainly welcome to write your own drivers for something that had to be held back in OpenSolaris due to a 3rd-party's constraints which are external to Sun. Come on, isn't that one of the beloved Linux mantras?
Under the CDDL they would have to be rewritten anyway if we wanted to make our own Solaris distros, because the 3rd party patent deals / licence grants apply only between that party and Sun. About which, more below...
The thing cynical/. posters seem to be missing here is that Sun/did/ look at the GPL... they didn't outright dismiss it. Sun found that they were encumbered by 3rd-party constraints
which the GPL was incompatible with and so they had to short-circuit to the next best thing - the CDDL.
Is the next best thing the CDDL, or is it the MPL upon which the CDDL was based? Under the MPL (section 3.4), Sun would have had to disclose the extent to which the code was encumbered by third parties. One of the few differences between the CDDL and the MPL is the removal of this clause. The implication of this is that Sun (who already has IP deals with the third party vendors) can use CDDL code in commercial products without any legal worries. But open source developers distributing CDDL cannot, and Sun's modification to the licence means that the encumbered parts of the code cannot be distinguished from the unecumbered parts.
The point of the CDDL seems to be to supply Sun with free development and debugging for code which only it can safely distribute. Lest you think this is me donning my tinfoil hat, please read the relevant Groklaw commentary.
I am not asking Sun to release other people's encumbered code. I just want them to identify (and, for bonus points, encapsulate it) so that it can be replaced with unencumbered code.
Solaris is an awesome technology. You would be - no pun intended - CLOSING yourself off if you think being able to look at and use the Solaris source is irrelevant.
Solaris does have a lot of cool stuff in it. Sadly, learning from some of that stuff could get us into legal trouble. It might be better for people who also do GPL development not to even look at the code.
From TFA: On Day 1 of OpenSolaris, because some OpenSolaris IP is encumbered by other companies (example - 3rd party drivers), we're going to have some source files in the kernel that will remain proprietary. Hence GPL was out of the running.
The whole point of opening the source and creating a community is so that people can develop the things they need, free of the problems proprietary code brings. I find it hard to believe that much Solaris kernel code belongs to anyone other than Sun.
Linux started out with very few drivers, but now supports most common hardware. Sometimes this support takes the form of binary or wrapped drivers, but that hasn't prevented Linux from remaining under the GPL.
I have an asterisk server that directs all telephone calls that are from outside my local dialing to voicemail
That is fucking awesome. I hope your voicemail message is something along the lines of "taste my open source PBX fury, human spam!" followed by an earsplitting 15 kHz tone.
Why the decision to go with an almost totally American leading cast)?
Judging by some of the past US adaptations of British books, my guess would be parochialism, hubris, and a basic contempt for the material. (No disrespect to the US actors who I'm sure did their best, however miscast).
Unfortunately the "author" doesn't provide a diff of the changes.
Hey Sven, I found a diff of the changes -- hope it helps. I would love to see a cleaned up version of this rolled into the GIMP as an option to help Photoshop users migrate.
You know, it is possible for them to both be a bad purchase right now. IMO, there just aren't enough good games for either system right now. I own both a PS2 and a GBA, so I should be the target market for both of these systems, but I'm going to hold off on both the PSP and the DS until I see a) compelling games and b)lower prices.
Hmmm. The de.lirio.us website is almost identical to the del.icio.us website. I know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all, but you'll probably want to change your site design...
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I websurfed, weak and weary,
Over many a strange and spurious website of hot chicks galore,
While I clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning,
And my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour.
'Tis not possible, I muttered, give me back my cheap hardcore! --
Slashdot Mirror
While the theory is sound, I don't think this analogy actually holds for geeky types. Most boardgaming fanatics seem to have have moved on to German strategy games and US block games. Interestingly, go is the only older game to make it into the boardgamegeek.com top 50: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/browser.php?itemtype= game&sortby=rank
Chess comes in at a respectable 190, Risk at 2445, and Monopoly at 2914.
If you want to play old boardgames / wargames PBEM style, check out Cyberboard. It has an OGRE / GEV module, as well as modules for many other games (ASL, 18xx, Columbia block games etc.).
I agree with you, and the comment was intended as discussional grist ('some people' in the abstract) rather than an attack ('some people' == you). Sorry if it came off that way.
"So every unit sold for homebrew modding for Linux, or modding for running pirated titles, is a financial loss, since it won't have any game sales to offset the loss and turn a profit."
You know what's an even bigger loss, both financially and in a PR sense? An unsold unit. I can't believe the doublethink some people go through to justify buying an MS product.
You can minimise this problem by having strict naming conventions for variables, objects, methods etc that give hints to type and scope. For example:
Then just make sure that any explicit casting ends with assignment to an appropriately named thing, e.g lfAmount = (float) aiAmount + Math.PI
And you can confim that conventions are being adhered to by running completed source files through a script full of arcane regular expressions. Hours of fun! Or use a strongly typed language.
"...do you group your books by color or by topic? Especially the O'Reilly books... does the Sendmail one go in your "mail server" books? Does the pink Python book go next to the pink CVS book or next to the red and white Ruby book? Decisions decisions!" As a truly tragic geek, I order mine (using spine colour) by the electromagnetic spectrum. So Programming PHP (green) goes before Programming Perl (blue), etc.
But... is this product even safe? I'm not an organic chemist by any means, but it seems to me that you'd want to do a significant amount of testing on any new compound to make sure that it's not going to have any long-term negative effects.
Don't worry, they'll do some animal testing and the FDA will pass it. Like with thalidomide.
Then you don't understand the tenants of classic liberalism
Well, I'm sincere but fallible -- perhaps not the best landlord material, but certainly far from the worst. What do you consider the tenets of classic liberalism, and would you say that the US government has consistently upheld them, bearing in mind such shining moments as the Vietnam war (featuring the draft), McCarthyism, the bipartisan support for the Patriot act, Guantanamo Bay, the opposition to free speech from Tipper Gore and others, the lack of separation between church and state etc?
To me, the liberal philosophy stems from the idea of natural rights, where the freedom and dignity of the individual is paramount: free speech, freedom of religion, representation, rule of law (including the classical liberal concept of property), freedom of movement etc. That's the sum of it, really. Then from that it splits off into the various modern and contemporary interpretations of liberalism: socialism, communism, libertarianism, syndicalism, anarchism etc, and I suspect that this is where our opinions diverge. Anyway, my point in the context of the article and our original posts is that I don't consider political parties who advocate censorship to be liberal, given that free speech is a natural right and a tenet of classical liberalism.
Many people on Slashdot would consider libertarianism to be classically liberal. I don't know whether this is your view or not, but I don't consider libertarianism to be classically liberal, because a) it puts the rights of property (for which read individuals owning property) over the rights of people, and b) it favours user-pays access to social services (health, education, transport), which again leads to the wealthy having more rights than the poor (unnatural rights based on property). As you can probably infer from my original post, I consider equal access to services based on proportional taxation to be truer to classical liberalism.
I couldn't say which of the other recent isms most closely fits my conception of liberalism. Probably anarchism in the Chomsky sense rather than the black bloc sense, although it seems to have something of an image problem and to be adverse to reform (which is another thing I consider liberal). Reform (rather than revolution or edict) is a liberal ideal to me, because it is relatively low impact -- you're not going to hear of x thousand deaths due to gradual planned change as you might with the other two.
or just don't believe in them, but since all intelligent and open-minded people are liberal, whatever you believe has to be liberal too [...] You're right on about 2/3 of those in terms of what the notion of "liberalism" is supposed to be about.
Are you making the same assumptions here? Obviously since you can identify which of my criteria are right and wrong, whatever you believe to be truly liberal must be infallibly so, right?
I am not an American, and I concede that the term liberal has various meanings in various countries (consider the Australian Liberal party, who are basically right-wing christians). Chomsky, who I mentioned earlier as an example of what I consider liberal, doesn't identify himself as a liberal because he considers the term to have been watered down (by the Democrats among others) in US political discourse. In that particular sense (liberal = centrism in the Democratic mode), I am not liberal, but as I stated earlier, IMO liberal != Democrat (and vice versa).
A computer game you buy and play privately in your home is one thing, but broadcast television is in some way public behavior, because of its wide exposure. Wide release movies are similar as well.
Dude, I know! If only there were some sort of ratings system to let parents know about the content of TV and movies before plonking their kids in front of the screen!
While you're out campaigning for that, see if you can get the powers that be to attach a recommended age to the ratings, so that parents can see at a glance whether the content is appropriate for their kids. This could totally revolutionise child-rearing, while still allowing grown-ups to view boobies if they so desire. Get cracking.
I would have agreed with you a year or two ago -- RE 0 through 3 really were beating a dead horse. But having just played through Resident Evil 4, I think there's a lot of life left in the franchise. Since you seem to have missed it, I'll fill you in.
RE4 is set in an anonymous Spanish speaking country (often outdoors), and rather than zombies, it pits you against some decidedly Cthuloid enemies. The controls are finally functional (you can run, spin around, aim properly etc), and the inventory and ammo system has been fixed up (reloading is a matter of pressing a button).
In play, it feels a more like an FPS game than a surival horror title. There's plenty of sniping, some rail shooter levels, and even some rhythm-based hand to hand combat. There's also a bit of light RPG stuff in there: upgradable weapons, multiple paths, side quests etc.
Of course, you will need a GameCube to play it, and they're just for kids*, right?
(*for which read 'people with at least a 3rd grade education')
Like Hillary Clinton? Tipper Gore?
Yes, just like them. Democrat != liberal, and in fact the US Democrats are considered right wing in the rest of the western world. They might be a little less right wing than Bush, but if they're pushing for the enshrinement of fundamentalist christian 'morals' in legislation, they're definitely both conservative and unreasonable.
When I think liberal, I think no censorship, decriminalised drug use, free speech (inclusive of flag burning etc), right to trial, right to religious belief or lack thereof (including islam and atheism), sexual freedom, universal health care and education, heavy regulation of business, a pacifist foreign policy etc. I don't think the US has ever even come close to that.
La Jetee is a great shortish film that every science fiction fan should see (in the original French, if possible). The Hollwood movie 12 Monkeys is based on La Jetee, but as is usually the case, the original is the best. La Jetee is also commonly cited as an influence on The Terminator, and on time travel movies in general. I was flipping through an old New Worlds magazine the other night and found a review of La Jetee by J.G. Ballard in which he describes it as the most realistic example of time travel ever shown on screen. Forty years later, I'd say that's still the case.
It's not too difficult to dig up a copy of La Jetee. There are two DVD versions and one VHS version, each with different cuts and language setup. The most recent DVD version is a region 2 PAL double feature with Sans Soleil, and you can get it from Amazon UK (ref. free link).
A European release for the sequel has been mentioned here and there. No details, but some scant info here and here. Also, Namco sent Katamari 2 press packs to the Euro press, which would be pointless if there were no Euro release planned. Failing that, there is a Nintendo DS version coming out.
Fingers crossed, eh?
I'd vote for him several times.
If Diebold is involved, you probably will : )
Try these:
Well, you're certainly welcome to write your own drivers for something that had to be held back in OpenSolaris due to a 3rd-party's constraints which are external to Sun. Come on, isn't that one of the beloved Linux mantras?
/. posters seem to be missing here is that Sun /did/ look at the GPL... they didn't outright dismiss it. Sun found that they were encumbered by 3rd-party constraints
which the GPL was incompatible with and so they had to short-circuit to the next best thing - the CDDL.
Under the CDDL they would have to be rewritten anyway if we wanted to make our own Solaris distros, because the 3rd party patent deals / licence grants apply only between that party and Sun. About which, more below...
The thing cynical
Is the next best thing the CDDL, or is it the MPL upon which the CDDL was based? Under the MPL (section 3.4), Sun would have had to disclose the extent to which the code was encumbered by third parties. One of the few differences between the CDDL and the MPL is the removal of this clause. The implication of this is that Sun (who already has IP deals with the third party vendors) can use CDDL code in commercial products without any legal worries. But open source developers distributing CDDL cannot, and Sun's modification to the licence means that the encumbered parts of the code cannot be distinguished from the unecumbered parts.
The point of the CDDL seems to be to supply Sun with free development and debugging for code which only it can safely distribute. Lest you think this is me donning my tinfoil hat, please read the relevant Groklaw commentary.
I am not asking Sun to release other people's encumbered code. I just want them to identify (and, for bonus points, encapsulate it) so that it can be replaced with unencumbered code.
Solaris is an awesome technology. You would be - no pun intended - CLOSING yourself off if you think being able to look at and use the Solaris source is irrelevant.
Solaris does have a lot of cool stuff in it. Sadly, learning from some of that stuff could get us into legal trouble. It might be better for people who also do GPL development not to even look at the code.
Gee, I didn't hear people complaining when they opened the source to Open Office, their grid control, or any number of other things.
Open Office was a great contribution, but sadly this is not more of the same. See PJ's comments on the CDDL for details.
From TFA: On Day 1 of OpenSolaris, because some OpenSolaris IP is encumbered by other companies (example - 3rd party drivers), we're going to have some source files in the kernel that will remain proprietary. Hence GPL was out of the running.
The whole point of opening the source and creating a community is so that people can develop the things they need, free of the problems proprietary code brings. I find it hard to believe that much Solaris kernel code belongs to anyone other than Sun.
Linux started out with very few drivers, but now supports most common hardware. Sometimes this support takes the form of binary or wrapped drivers, but that hasn't prevented Linux from remaining under the GPL.
This is just more of the usual Sun guff.
I have an asterisk server that directs all telephone calls that are from outside my local dialing to voicemail
That is fucking awesome. I hope your voicemail message is something along the lines of "taste my open source PBX fury, human spam!" followed by an earsplitting 15 kHz tone.
Why the decision to go with an almost totally American leading cast)?
Judging by some of the past US adaptations of British books, my guess would be parochialism, hubris, and a basic contempt for the material. (No disrespect to the US actors who I'm sure did their best, however miscast).
Unfortunately the "author" doesn't provide a diff of the changes.
Hey Sven, I found a diff of the changes -- hope it helps. I would love to see a cleaned up version of this rolled into the GIMP as an option to help Photoshop users migrate.
Keep up the good work : )
That is some funny shit, my friend. In the words of the Vulture Warrior 920: my nose cone is off to you, sir.
You know, it is possible for them to both be a bad purchase right now. IMO, there just aren't enough good games for either system right now. I own both a PS2 and a GBA, so I should be the target market for both of these systems, but I'm going to hold off on both the PSP and the DS until I see a) compelling games and b)lower prices.
Hmmm. The de.lirio.us website is almost identical to the del.icio.us website. I know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all, but you'll probably want to change your site design...
Once upon a midnight dreary,
while I websurfed, weak and weary,
Over many a strange and spurious
website of hot chicks galore,
While I clicked my fav'rite bookmark,
suddenly there came a warning,
And my heart was filled with mourning,
mourning for my dear amour.
'Tis not possible, I muttered,
give me back my cheap hardcore! --
Quoth the server, "404".