It's not awful, just a projection of the future of the language. Just as the Chinese of today isn't pronounced the same as the Chinese of five hundred years ago. That's a nice explanation, but I doubt it works. As far as I know, some actors had more trouble pronouncing the Chinese than others. So while none of it is likely to be perfect Mandarin, some of them might be understandable by a Chinese speaker, while others speak complete gibberish.
"Whichever way you try to spin it, GPL restricts some freedoms"
No, the GPL acts to prevent you from restricting the freedoms of others. In a way, yes, and that's a freedom too. So why pretend you're contradicting what I said?
GPL restricts freedoms that the authors of the GPL want to restrict: the freedom to take advantage of someone else's code and add it to your own without giving anything back, the freedom to redistribute code under a different license. Those are freedoms, but they are freedoms that (like so many freedoms) interfere with other freedoms. And the authors of GPL consider that harmful, so they want to restrict it.
No, the GPL acts to prevent you from restricting the freedoms of downstream developers, in that sense the BSD license is restrictive. That's what he said:
2) stop proprietary developers from using the code without giving anything back. Whichever way you try to spin it, GPL restricts some freedoms. But it restricts those freedoms that GPL advocates think deserve to be restricted. Freedoms they consider harmful.
No, you are exercising control of the distribution of your code, not their code. They are free to distribute their code however the want, but if they want to distribute your code, they have to do so by your rules. They are not free to add their own code to your code and distribute that the way they want. By building their own code on top of your code, your GPL license restricts they way they can distribute their code. This is most definitely a way in which GPL is not-free: it restricts the freedom to take advantage of someone else's code.
And that's freedom that the GPL quite explicitly wants to restrict. It wants to be viral, so everybody who bases their code on someone else's code has to use GPL for their code.
And stopping a company from taking Open Source code, changing it and closing it's source grants freedom to users of that software, and more importantly, it's original authors, the people who put in their hard work and do not want to be ripped off by corporations. How can you be ripped off by someone using your open software? Even if he modifies it and turns it into closed software (like Transgaming did with WineX, for example), the original software is still open, and everybody is still fully able to use it in whatever way they like. The original open software does not disappear if someone takes advantage of it.
No one is ripping anyone off here. Someone is simply taking advantage of someone else's work. That may be unfair, but it's not restricting anyone's freedom.
If you don't like the GPL then don't use it's software, unfortunately for you, no-one will give a shit because generally you aren't paying for it, it's just one less user of something developed for free. Depending on the project, people may care a lot. Open source thrives on communities. Less users means smaller communities, less contributions, and lower quality software.
One of the reasons my employer embraces open source and tries to get as many employees active as committers and contributors of Apache projects (not GPL, admittedly), is because the more they contribute, the more those projects will support what we need. It's a mutually beneficial relationship.
"Funny. Rick Perry's religion says he should pray for you, love you as he loves himself, and treat you the way he wants to be treated."
Rick Perry's religion says I should and will be condemned to eternal damnation for not attending the same church he does as devoutly as he does. "If you live your life and don't confess your sins to God Almighty through the authority of Christ and His blood (...) you're going straight to hell with a nonstop ticket." Now, this leaves the door open for two alternatives that have seen themselves played out throughout history, repeatedly:
In his "love" for me he will do everything in his power (including the political power granted to him by the people) to "correct" my thinking through coercion.
Since his belief system has me being damned after death regardless, there's no real harm in allowing me or causing me to suffer while I still live (after all, I'd better get used to it).
While I agree that his quote puts him way over in the extreme fundamentalist corner of christianity, simply believing non-christians will go to hell does not automatically imply he will either force you to conform to his beliefs or not care about your suffering.
Any good christian should know that it is not a christian's place to judge his fellow human beings. That task belongs to God and God alone. A human's duty is to love his neighbour, love his enemy, not cast the first stone, and generally be nice to people.
Unfortunately, many christians like to put themselves on God's throne. Personally, I think they'll be the first to go to hell.
Believe it or not it was made and developed by the US Army as a recruitment tool. I know that, but I don't see how that makes it massive multiplayer. You're not playing a single game simultaneously with thousands of other potential recruits.
Hmmm... a new FPS, it's MMO, and it's free. So is America's Army Is it? I was under the impression that America's Army was just a regular old multiplayer game.
Counterstrike is also an MMO Is it? I was under the impression that you had only a limited number of players per game of counterstrike. To count as Massive Multiplayer, as opposed to regular multiplayer, you need to support hundreds or thousands of players at least. Or technically be able to support them in a single game, even if they don't show up.
Time spent playing per dollar is NOT the best way to measure a game's entertainment value. This reminds me of the game Journey to Alpha Centauri, mentioned in Terry Pratchett's Only You Can Save Mankind. In the game, you travel to Alpha Centauri. In real time.
If it were, then RPGs with scrooge-like experience awards forcing hours mindless of grinding would be the way to go. Well, a lot of people seem to be enjoying World of Warcraft.
The seller wants to be fairly compensated for their product, the buyer wants to have full access to the thing that they buy, and they don't want to lose access at some later date because of issues with the DRM. And that's exactly the problem here. If it requires online activation to play, that means I won't be able to play the game I bought after their server is taken down.
And chances are that will happen sooner or later. And the company doesn't even have to go bankrupt for it. Microsoft recently took down a music authentication server, which means that a lot of people who bought music from MS won't be able to play that music on any other device than on which it's currently enabled.
The same problem will happen to games. Basically, you rent the game for the duration the publisher is willing/able to support it or the time you're using your current computer, whichever is longer. Don't expect to be able to replay this game in 5 or 10 years.
Unfortunately, liberal in the US indicates people who are vehemently opposed to economic freedom, so that definition has become somewhat defunct. Note that there are more freedoms than just economic freedom. That's a mistake in what many Europeans consider to be "liberal": it's all about freedom for the rich and the big corporations, for those who can afford it. Civil liberties don't count for quite so much, except when it gets them votes.
It is a lot of money. But would you call it "rich"? As opposed to "well off" or "doing well"? Bare in mind, when one says you are "rich" most people put you in the same category as millionaires and such. That depends entirely on who you ask. To the vast majority of the world's population, having enough disposable income to go on vacation is rich. To a lot of people in the US and the EU, having enough disposable income to go on vacation twice a year is wealthy. To me, being wealthy means having a better income than 60% of the population.
You're right. Piracy CANNOT be stopped. What they can do, is minimizing the "financial damages" from piracy by offering people incentives to purchase original games. If they're smart business people, they shouldn't be minimizing any abstract, assumed "financial damages", they should maximize real, countable financial gain.
That's what Stardock is doing, annd it works very well for them. Investing money in annoying your paying customers, like an increasing number of other publishers is doing, is like an unwise investment to me.
From a corp. perspective, they often under sell these products based under the assumption that they will make back money on media. That's a stupid assumption from the corp, and a bad way to do business. And it still doesn't make it illegal for any purchaser of the hardware to use that hardware for something else.
In fact, I've heard about scientists buying PS3s because it was the cheapest computing power they could buy.
Conservatives are the ones that follow the constitution and do little to hamper our freedoms. Check out Reagan - the greatest president of the 20th century and compare him to FDR, our most facist dictator of a president - and the biggest failure. Is it safe to assume this is intended as irony? I mean, I know there people out there with some truly twisted world views, but this one takes the cake.
The trouble is...how low a salary they are wanting to use now to define 'wealthy'.
If the current rebate checks are an indicator...like $75K as the top of the middle income level before cutting back on how much you get....
That is scary...making about $100K and over is NOT rich...in many areas in the US...you can't afford a one room studio apt on that salary...
You're kidding me, right? I know the dollar isn't worth all that much anymore, but $100k a year is still quite a lot of money. That's $8k a month. If you have trouble finding a one room appartment for that money, perhaps you should look a bit beyond downtown Manhattan.
Is there a time where taxes rates in the US were decreased, for more than a limited period (and yes I am talking about this stupid economic stimulus check from Uncle Sam and other short term fixes), and collections didn't rise? We did it in the 20s, 60s and 80s and revenues increased. Didn't Bush lower taxes too? And what's the state of the US economy and national debt now?
How would border guards be able to tell an illegal song on an iPod (i.e. downloaded without buying it in any form) What's more, how can they tell in which country it was downloaded? There are lots of countries where downloading copyrighted content is legal. It's just the distribution without permission that's illegal.
If you claim I do not have a right to my birthright, I consider that justification to kill you and take it by force.
You do not have a right to what you did not create. If you want something, you should make it yourself. It's my land, Did you create the land?
Seriously, that's the GP's point: people stick a flag in something that was already there and that they didn't create, and suddenly they claim ownership. And if you're too late to claim anything, it's your own damn fault for getting born too late.
In this respect I agree entirely with you that people don't have a right to what they didn't create, and that means that if they do claim a piece of land, they should reimburse the rest of mankind for denying them the opportunity to make use of a piece of land that's just as much their as it is yours.
Countless video games have been marred by subpar voice acting. I've always wondered how programmers and artists feel when they experience a finished product and they realize all their hard work has been ruined by cheap, crappy acting. Assassin's Creed comes to mind immediately. Yet despite its crappy voice acting, Assassin's Creed was a very successful game.
I'm not saying the programmers and artists deserve to be paid less, but they will have to compete for their slice of the pie. The actors and musicians are represented by strong unions who fight for their members. Are the programmers? Perhaps programmers should get a union too. I'd love to see managers and voice actors create a game without the help of programmers.
Slashdot Mirror
So they're not even cursing in the same language.
No, the GPL acts to prevent you from restricting the freedoms of others. In a way, yes, and that's a freedom too. So why pretend you're contradicting what I said?
GPL restricts freedoms that the authors of the GPL want to restrict: the freedom to take advantage of someone else's code and add it to your own without giving anything back, the freedom to redistribute code under a different license. Those are freedoms, but they are freedoms that (like so many freedoms) interfere with other freedoms. And the authors of GPL consider that harmful, so they want to restrict it.
And that's freedom that the GPL quite explicitly wants to restrict. It wants to be viral, so everybody who bases their code on someone else's code has to use GPL for their code.
No one is ripping anyone off here. Someone is simply taking advantage of someone else's work. That may be unfair, but it's not restricting anyone's freedom. If you don't like the GPL then don't use it's software, unfortunately for you, no-one will give a shit because generally you aren't paying for it, it's just one less user of something developed for free. Depending on the project, people may care a lot. Open source thrives on communities. Less users means smaller communities, less contributions, and lower quality software.
One of the reasons my employer embraces open source and tries to get as many employees active as committers and contributors of Apache projects (not GPL, admittedly), is because the more they contribute, the more those projects will support what we need. It's a mutually beneficial relationship.
Rick Perry's religion says I should and will be condemned to eternal damnation for not attending the same church he does as devoutly as he does. "If you live your life and don't confess your sins to God Almighty through the authority of Christ and His blood (...) you're going straight to hell with a nonstop ticket." Now, this leaves the door open for two alternatives that have seen themselves played out throughout history, repeatedly:
- In his "love" for me he will do everything in his power (including the political power granted to him by the people) to "correct" my thinking through coercion.
- Since his belief system has me being damned after death regardless, there's no real harm in allowing me or causing me to suffer while I still live (after all, I'd better get used to it).
While I agree that his quote puts him way over in the extreme fundamentalist corner of christianity, simply believing non-christians will go to hell does not automatically imply he will either force you to conform to his beliefs or not care about your suffering.Any good christian should know that it is not a christian's place to judge his fellow human beings. That task belongs to God and God alone. A human's duty is to love his neighbour, love his enemy, not cast the first stone, and generally be nice to people.
Unfortunately, many christians like to put themselves on God's throne. Personally, I think they'll be the first to go to hell.
And chances are that will happen sooner or later. And the company doesn't even have to go bankrupt for it. Microsoft recently took down a music authentication server, which means that a lot of people who bought music from MS won't be able to play that music on any other device than on which it's currently enabled.
The same problem will happen to games. Basically, you rent the game for the duration the publisher is willing/able to support it or the time you're using your current computer, whichever is longer. Don't expect to be able to replay this game in 5 or 10 years.
That's what Stardock is doing, annd it works very well for them. Investing money in annoying your paying customers, like an increasing number of other publishers is doing, is like an unwise investment to me.
They should really stop fighting the wave, and put all their anti-piracy money into creative talent and developers.
That's what they're doing. They're investing their money into developing creative solutions on how to stop piracy.In fact, I've heard about scientists buying PS3s because it was the cheapest computing power they could buy.
But if I understand correctly, he's just as white as he is black.
It comes from the Latin "liber", or "free". So most liberal means most freedom-oriented. You could do worse than voting for freedom.And what the heck does it mean, anyway, to be the "most liberal?"
(Especially compared to all the repression that the republicans have supported over the past 8 years.)
The trouble is...how low a salary they are wanting to use now to define 'wealthy'.
If the current rebate checks are an indicator...like $75K as the top of the middle income level before cutting back on how much you get....
You're kidding me, right? I know the dollar isn't worth all that much anymore, but $100k a year is still quite a lot of money. That's $8k a month. If you have trouble finding a one room appartment for that money, perhaps you should look a bit beyond downtown Manhattan.That is scary...making about $100K and over is NOT rich...in many areas in the US...you can't afford a one room studio apt on that salary...
You do not have a right to what you did not create. If you want something, you should make it yourself. It's my land, Did you create the land?
Seriously, that's the GP's point: people stick a flag in something that was already there and that they didn't create, and suddenly they claim ownership. And if you're too late to claim anything, it's your own damn fault for getting born too late.
In this respect I agree entirely with you that people don't have a right to what they didn't create, and that means that if they do claim a piece of land, they should reimburse the rest of mankind for denying them the opportunity to make use of a piece of land that's just as much their as it is yours.