No, the public will when they realize you're holding ideas hostage in order to profit.
You're using scarcity to drive up your asking price; and market fundamentals state that using exclusivity and rarity to influence market price runs against the very notion of an open market where competition manages the effenciency of resources and work.
And what utopian world is that? The Utopian world of patents, where YOU HAVE TO PUBLISH THE METHODS OF YOUR IDEA TO EVERYONE ON THE PLANET before collecting a SINGLE CENT OFF OF IT?
> The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
RMS's essays are available for Free as In Beer, all over the web. Also free as in speech, because you dont have to pay for the book to get access to the ideas and thoughts that went into them.
RMS isn't charging you because the only place to get the ideas in the book is buying the book. He's charging you because you should be free to charge whatever you like for you work; you simply shouldn't be able to sell the product by withholding the ideas in the product unless you purchase.
Today, we have tons of Franchise Pimps: companies that produce exclusive works and dont allow you access to the ideas of those works without buying those works. They hold the ideas hostage behind the distribution layer of those ideas.
RMS isn't doing that; he's charging you because some work went into collecting, compiling and publishing those works.
That is, you're paying for the BOOK, not the IDEA. Just like how software should be; you should be paying for the work, not the exclusivity of the ideas behind that work (because presumably, those ideas should be protected in some limited term by copyright or patents.. both of which promise (despite the model being broken today) that the ideas DO become available to the general public for 0$ after the author has been compesated enough for those ideas to continue working on his/her next idea.)
Free doesn't imply free; you just assume, contrary to the very function of copyright and patent laws, that holding ideas hostage and manipulating your asking price because your ideas are exclusive to your distribution/publication layter, is required to make money. Nothing in history supports this view, although the current mindset in business has yet to take their beer blasses off (pun intended.)
Ok. I own a plant. 1 dollar. Now I own a plant in a store. The plant 'enhances' the decor of my store. Clearly, I owe the plant provider more money, right?
>I write for software for a living (ie, a manufactuerer of software), and I damn well can charge anyone any price I want for any reason, period.
Well, not quite true. Predatory pricing laws exist (while I recognize that there is some debate as to the true effects of predatory pricing as not neccessarily being bad.)
But it is illegal to price below cost in order to protect or gain a monopoly.
> these Slashbots actually think they can justify pirated MP3s
Exactly. Yes, and the mainstream music industry has been destroyed because you _can_ copy mp3s. (Sarcasm, of course.)
Just like how programmers will be destroyed because you _could_ copy their source. (Although I'm sure *you* would never steal anybody elses code.. hehe, too bad such an assertion would run counter to your fears of everybody else (oops, sorry, *but you*) stealing your work.)
Its not naive. I'm just not willing to fuck our scientific gene pool and knowledge base for self gain. Its that simple. You take the selfish position, I take the selfless. Because yes, people will abuse welfare, but I'm not prepared to fuck those who benifit legitimately from it just because I'm too greedy to allow a small percentage of my wealth to fall into the hands of those who dont deserve it.
Thats what makes me a naive selfless (but ultimately employed, well paid person who gives away 'ip' all the time.. funny nobody yet has changed what they were doing in life just to focus on copying and selling my hard work) person and thats what makes you a world wary, selfish (and gullible) person.
The downfall of western culture (since were #1 now, we can know we wont be forever) will be because we refuse to deal with the rest of the world on *anything* but our own terms. ("Hey, we made this propserous land... we deserve to ditacte the terms of our relationships!" goes the reasoning, right?)
Thats the exact attitude that lets the pressure build up longer and longer before the fault inevitably gives way. Have fun.
I just wanna know how we got from the Boston Tea Party, a revolt against tea makers who protected their position at all costs to increase their wealth, to today, where protecting your position at all costs to all people to increase your wealth is the very core of modern American values. The only reason you think a majority out there will willingly steal your ideas is because thats exactly the kind of paranoia and worldview that plays straight into the hands of those seeking to strengthen their position furthur (ie, the market leaders.)
This isn't a tin foil hat, its an appreication that history is just a pendulum; those who honestly think it progresses in a line are just the ones who get left behind when the self-correction mechanisms kick in.
Which isn't to say you'll suffer from your position. I'm sure you'll profit nicely. Just understand that your logic is completely self serving, and pray you dont end up in the way of a more 'fit' self server. Eshewing altruism (the act of giving without being garaunteed repaying) is a dangerous game to play unless youre willing to bet youll never be in a situation of need yourself.
> Why would I pay attention to your idealistic flights of fancy when there are thousands who have no intention of rewarding my "good" (and naive) nature by stealing my ideas?
Mostly because the benifit everyone receives from everybody sharing (but still legally protecting their ideas for a limited time a la royalty fee) their inventions outweighs the 'lost revenue opportunity' of those folks who dont repay you for your work.
See: Music. See: Science. See: Photocopiers. See: Radio. See... well, just see. There is an intrinsic benifit to society from freeing up ideas; you dont have to free them for free.. just let them be free and dont worry about the 'grey market runoff' that so groundlessly scares so many capitalists.
Believe you me, I am not naive. I'm a cynic.. pretty much because of the fearmongering people dredge up when your talking about market dynamics and how intellectual content in new technologies interact with markets. People always get scared. People wait until their hand is bleeding before they realize they can unclench their hand without dying.
I recall correctly (and I'm probably slightly off base here) they couldn't selectively charge different OEMs different rates (ie, they couldn't alter the 'MS tax' just to get them more OEM deals).. but I'm not sure about end user software.
> If I right good code it will be commented, modular, well designed and generally perfectly well suited for being stripped and used in your projects for free..
Oh, come off it. Ask scientists how far along science would be if some guy who spent 100 hours discovering something didn't make his methods available and reproducable to the public at large.
Thats nothing but a greedy argument. Nobody is saying you should be forced to give away your code for free. You just cant profit off of it without 'giving back'. Look at patents.. you are granted legal protection for publishing your methods. Same applies to code; the copyright is yours when you create the work, and folks stealing your code can be punished. But the act of providing your source code (with the stipulation that it cannot be redistributed, thats AOK) to paying customers is not going to bankrupt you for the very reasons that:
a) you cant get/use the source without paying you (like a patent) b) you can still seek legal resourse if you spot somebody profiting off of your work.
I'm sick of this argument, because we've concluded time and time again (via patents, copyright expiration) that if you want to profit off of an idea or hard work, you cannot 'repay' mankind by just selling the product.. you also have to set your innovations into the wild so long as you can keep earning enough to keep you earning.
exactly, so why do you need to protect the source to protect your IP? the laws protect your IP.. just cause the code is in the open doesn't mean you can strip & use the code.
The GPL has been used to catch stealers of code who don't follow the license its provided in. Most big companies have way more lawyers, so they'd be able to defend their IP even more successfully.
Yeah, before you know it, book authors might just let people read the words in their stories (even people who own photocopiers, gasp!).. no wonder you cant make a living as an author!
I usually select passwords that are patterns on my keyboard (non-trivial patterns).
People seem to select lexographical patterns (words with numbers replacing some of the letters.. 1 instead of l, etc). And anybody trying out programmatic attacks on passwords is likely not going to consider the pattern-space of the keyboard (instead favouring dates, names, words, and variations thereof) as a possible source of passwords.
And I don't have to remember the password proper; only the non-trivial pattern it makes on my qwerty. Results are usually with letters, numbers, and symbols, but its very easy to remember the visual footprint of these passwords.
> much like the OO muds from the text based MUD era
It would indeed be fascinating to see a graphical version of lamdaMOO, where you could use the virtual machine of a lambdaMOO server to create new objects, properties, verbs, but also have it be totally graphical.
yes.. yes, I'd very much like to see that.. one wonders if difficult cultures would end up creating 'reflections' of other cultures, since the in-game world allows a freedom to its players to create and experience certain features of others cultures that are incompatible with the player's real culture.
Yeah, I knew I got that wrong. An anagram is just another word with the letters rearranged, right?:P I have a brain freeze, thanks for the correction.
> Calling this a new 'skin' of EverQuest is akin to calling Robert Jordan's/The Wheel of Time/ a new 'skin' on/The Lord of the Rings/.
So I take it its a totally new engine unto itself. Cool, I wasn't sure.
BTW, I'm interested in hearing about success people have had in playing these games casually. I'm a massive FPS junkie, so I'm just recovering from that.. a little scared to try anything related to the term 'Evercrack'.
Do you know anybody that plays these things like.. 5, 6 hours a week, or is it going to draw in most of its players for heavy use gaming?
One more thing, OT for the game nerds.. Metroid Prime is the best game I have ever played. Ever. And I'm a huge gaming nerd. This is a system seller. If you liked Super Metroid, I've NEVER come across a sequel that pushed the state of the art to the bleeding edge while keeping every single element from the original that made it awesome. It is the pinnicle of gaming and should be required playing for anybody interested in figuring out how to hit *only* the high notes of game design.
its still worthwhile if your memory dump is 80 megs.
the tiny amount of dabbling I did with VC (I'm a *nix programmer) makes me recall the Serializable class.. basically, if you subclassed off of this, it had methods for essentially serializing and deserializing from files. You could take any child object and just ship it to a file.
If the doc format in memory is a bunch of classes, they just need to mark off which ones have changed since the last save and serialize only those classes to disk.
Of course, I'm musing, I'm not sure, but I do have 4 years of C/C++ programming under my belt so I shouldn't be insanely off base here?
i dont follow everquest (after quake/teamfortress ruined my chances at an elec eng degree, no harm done)... but whats the engine underneath this new Star Wars MMPORMGPROGSPORMPG? Somebody told me it was just a modded EQ engine, so isn't this more like an expansion pack or 'skin' rather than a whole new.. oh god dont make me try to figure out the anagram again..
Just as there are folks out there who will defend telemarketers, for the simple reason that most people dislike them and they feel compelled to defend them as individuals.
When people rail against telemarketing, they're railing against telemarketing (although people will often personify and channel their agnst towards the industry using the person that last called them, of course.) Similarly, when people diss MS, they're dissing what MS has made, not the people within MS. IE, you dont have to believe the pope is flawed to believe that christianity is flawed.
But why people jump in for MS is beyond me. With their kind of money and legal might, they have absolutely no need for anybody to defend them in the court of public opinion. I always wonder why folks waste their breath.. regardless of whether or not they have a legitimate point.
I dunno what forums you hang out it, but the number of helpful, considerate *nix programmers far outweigh the snotty ones in my experience.
Thats my 4+ years experience, but I guess everyones' milages do vary.
Disclaimer: I work on FreeBSD and not on Linux.. any chance that its specifically the Linux crowd that is snotty? I have to admit, the way some folks talk about Linux, its like nobody else had discovered the joys of free *nixes before Linux hit the mainstream. Sometimes they seem to forget that folks were quietly using BSDs long after the feeling of superiority one gets from leaving the well travelled path of least resistance had worn off.
Theres also some IE patch every few weeks. Its not 'news' to me, but hey, until I give the/. staff permission to read my mind, I can't complain if they post stuff that isn't news in my mind.
Just thank your lucky stars this is a cold medium, my friend. If you dont think its news, then it isn't. Skip to the next article, or go to another site.
Fuck, I dont call up my local paper and complain everytime theres an article in there that I'm not interested in. I can choose to read what I like, so I've no right to bitch about the content not being 'news' to me.
I wonder about you "this is news?" posters. I have to wonder what good it could possibly do to post "this is news?" posts instead of saving your time & typing for an article that actually interests you. That is, unless you want me to spam the threads of articles that interest *you*, but not me with, "wheres my news?" posts.
Whats the plan.. once enough folks whine,/. will magically start publishing articles that constitute news to 99.999% of its readership? And we can all head off into the sunset?
Allow me to preface this by saying that I feel this way *regardless* of which platform you are developing for:
Anybody who doesn't RTFM _before_ asking is asking for trouble. Doesn't matter what platform they're developing for. If you have time to code, you have the time to read the documentation, or a book, or... otherwise you're just wasting people's time. Of course, if you actually *did* develop for *nix, you'd know that there are tons of good mailing lists out there with kind curteous professionals who dont mind answering your questions if they havn't already been answered in the manual.
BUT, in the windows world, there are way more casual programmers who will help other casual programmers be lazy, in order to learn the bare minimum of what must be done to solve a problem. So people are generally more patient in the Windows world because there are less people who would apply the 'what should a professional do' metric against developers seeking help.
That doesn't make *nix developers elitist. Honest to god mechanics dont wanna stand around all day and explain how your engine works. If you're interested enough, you have time to learn the basics yourself.. once you're up to speed and can formulate intelligent questions that havn't been answered a million times before, that mechanic will be much more receptive towards helping you learn new things. Its a pretty natural dynamic, and one thats been around in pretty much any profession or industry.
Windows has more casual developer support. I'm sure, by support, they mean, "number of people developing for that platform." Given the install base of Windows, it shouldn't be surprising that there are more people developing for Windows than Unix.
As for MSDN...
Casual developers find MSDN is easier to use than looking through code themselves. Real developers find MSDN gets in the way of finding information. That there are more casual developers ('hacks', like screenwriters) than real developers should come as no surprise. Hobbiests or high-level hacks usually outweigh the professionals.
Slashdot Mirror
No, the public will when they realize you're holding ideas hostage in order to profit.
You're using scarcity to drive up your asking price; and market fundamentals state that using exclusivity and rarity to influence market price runs against the very notion of an open market where competition manages the effenciency of resources and work.
And what utopian world is that? The Utopian world of patents, where YOU HAVE TO PUBLISH THE METHODS OF YOUR IDEA TO EVERYONE ON THE PLANET before collecting a SINGLE CENT OFF OF IT?
No it doesn't.
.. both of which promise (despite the model being broken today) that the ideas DO become available to the general public for 0$ after the author has been compesated enough for those ideas to continue working on his/her next idea.)
> The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
RMS's essays are available for Free as In Beer, all over the web. Also free as in speech, because you dont have to pay for the book to get access to the ideas and thoughts that went into them.
RMS isn't charging you because the only place to get the ideas in the book is buying the book. He's charging you because you should be free to charge whatever you like for you work; you simply shouldn't be able to sell the product by withholding the ideas in the product unless you purchase.
Today, we have tons of Franchise Pimps: companies that produce exclusive works and dont allow you access to the ideas of those works without buying those works. They hold the ideas hostage behind the distribution layer of those ideas.
RMS isn't doing that; he's charging you because some work went into collecting, compiling and publishing those works.
That is, you're paying for the BOOK, not the IDEA. Just like how software should be; you should be paying for the work, not the exclusivity of the ideas behind that work (because presumably, those ideas should be protected in some limited term by copyright or patents
Free doesn't imply free; you just assume, contrary to the very function of copyright and patent laws, that holding ideas hostage and manipulating your asking price because your ideas are exclusive to your distribution/publication layter, is required to make money. Nothing in history supports this view, although the current mindset in business has yet to take their beer blasses off (pun intended.)
For the 1 hundredth BILLION TIME:
Free means, free to see how its made, free to use the source, free as in speech.
Free doesn't mean 'free' because had you read the goddamn article, you'd have read how RMS isn't opposed to charging for software.
God almighty. I don't think you were a troll, but I forgive the moderators for not having the "-1, Trite, glib, illinformed" mod option available.
Ok. I own a plant. 1 dollar. Now I own a plant in a store. The plant 'enhances' the decor of my store. Clearly, I owe the plant provider more money, right?
>I write for software for a living (ie, a manufactuerer of software), and I damn well can charge anyone any price I want for any reason, period.
Well, not quite true. Predatory pricing laws exist (while I recognize that there is some debate as to the true effects of predatory pricing as not neccessarily being bad.)
But it is illegal to price below cost in order to protect or gain a monopoly.
> these Slashbots actually think they can justify pirated MP3s
.. hehe, too bad such an assertion would run counter to your fears of everybody else (oops, sorry, *but you*) stealing your work.)
.. funny nobody yet has changed what they were doing in life just to focus on copying and selling my hard work) person and thats what makes you a world wary, selfish (and gullible) person.
... we deserve to ditacte the terms of our relationships!" goes the reasoning, right?)
Exactly. Yes, and the mainstream music industry has been destroyed because you _can_ copy mp3s. (Sarcasm, of course.)
Just like how programmers will be destroyed because you _could_ copy their source. (Although I'm sure *you* would never steal anybody elses code
Its not naive. I'm just not willing to fuck our scientific gene pool and knowledge base for self gain. Its that simple. You take the selfish position, I take the selfless. Because yes, people will abuse welfare, but I'm not prepared to fuck those who benifit legitimately from it just because I'm too greedy to allow a small percentage of my wealth to fall into the hands of those who dont deserve it.
Thats what makes me a naive selfless (but ultimately employed, well paid person who gives away 'ip' all the time
The downfall of western culture (since were #1 now, we can know we wont be forever) will be because we refuse to deal with the rest of the world on *anything* but our own terms. ("Hey, we made this propserous land
Thats the exact attitude that lets the pressure build up longer and longer before the fault inevitably gives way. Have fun.
I just wanna know how we got from the Boston Tea Party, a revolt against tea makers who protected their position at all costs to increase their wealth, to today, where protecting your position at all costs to all people to increase your wealth is the very core of modern American values. The only reason you think a majority out there will willingly steal your ideas is because thats exactly the kind of paranoia and worldview that plays straight into the hands of those seeking to strengthen their position furthur (ie, the market leaders.)
This isn't a tin foil hat, its an appreication that history is just a pendulum; those who honestly think it progresses in a line are just the ones who get left behind when the self-correction mechanisms kick in.
Which isn't to say you'll suffer from your position. I'm sure you'll profit nicely. Just understand that your logic is completely self serving, and pray you dont end up in the way of a more 'fit' self server. Eshewing altruism (the act of giving without being garaunteed repaying) is a dangerous game to play unless youre willing to bet youll never be in a situation of need yourself.
> Why would I pay attention to your idealistic flights of fancy when there are thousands who have no intention of rewarding my "good" (and naive) nature by stealing my ideas?
... well, just see. There is an intrinsic benifit to society from freeing up ideas; you dont have to free them for free .. just let them be free and dont worry about the 'grey market runoff' that so groundlessly scares so many capitalists.
.. pretty much because of the fearmongering people dredge up when your talking about market dynamics and how intellectual content in new technologies interact with markets. People always get scared. People wait until their hand is bleeding before they realize they can unclench their hand without dying.
Mostly because the benifit everyone receives from everybody sharing (but still legally protecting their ideas for a limited time a la royalty fee) their inventions outweighs the 'lost revenue opportunity' of those folks who dont repay you for your work.
See: Music. See: Science. See: Photocopiers. See: Radio. See
Believe you me, I am not naive. I'm a cynic
I recall correctly (and I'm probably slightly off base here) they couldn't selectively charge different OEMs different rates (ie, they couldn't alter the 'MS tax' just to get them more OEM deals) .. but I'm not sure about end user software.
> If I right good code it will be commented, modular, well designed and generally perfectly well suited for being stripped and used in your projects for free..
.. you are granted legal protection for publishing your methods. Same applies to code; the copyright is yours when you create the work, and folks stealing your code can be punished. But the act of providing your source code (with the stipulation that it cannot be redistributed, thats AOK) to paying customers is not going to bankrupt you for the very reasons that:
.. you also have to set your innovations into the wild so long as you can keep earning enough to keep you earning.
Oh, come off it. Ask scientists how far along science would be if some guy who spent 100 hours discovering something didn't make his methods available and reproducable to the public at large.
Thats nothing but a greedy argument. Nobody is saying you should be forced to give away your code for free. You just cant profit off of it without 'giving back'. Look at patents
a) you cant get/use the source without paying you (like a patent)
b) you can still seek legal resourse if you spot somebody profiting off of your work.
I'm sick of this argument, because we've concluded time and time again (via patents, copyright expiration) that if you want to profit off of an idea or hard work, you cannot 'repay' mankind by just selling the product
exactly, so why do you need to protect the source to protect your IP? the laws protect your IP .. just cause the code is in the open doesn't mean you can strip & use the code.
The GPL has been used to catch stealers of code who don't follow the license its provided in. Most big companies have way more lawyers, so they'd be able to defend their IP even more successfully.
Yeah, before you know it, book authors might just let people read the words in their stories (even people who own photocopiers, gasp!) .. no wonder you cant make a living as an author!
look at his schematic! if you have over 8 guests, you apparently need to use the master bathroom, cause its way bigger! ;)
I usually select passwords that are patterns on my keyboard (non-trivial patterns).
.. 1 instead of l, etc). And anybody trying out programmatic attacks on passwords is likely not going to consider the pattern-space of the keyboard (instead favouring dates, names, words, and variations thereof) as a possible source of passwords.
People seem to select lexographical patterns (words with numbers replacing some of the letters
And I don't have to remember the password proper; only the non-trivial pattern it makes on my qwerty. Results are usually with letters, numbers, and symbols, but its very easy to remember the visual footprint of these passwords.
> much like the OO muds from the text based MUD era
.. yes, I'd very much like to see that .. one wonders if difficult cultures would end up creating 'reflections' of other cultures, since the in-game world allows a freedom to its players to create and experience certain features of others cultures that are incompatible with the player's real culture.
It would indeed be fascinating to see a graphical version of lamdaMOO, where you could use the virtual machine of a lambdaMOO server to create new objects, properties, verbs, but also have it be totally graphical.
yes
>Acronym? :)
:P I have a brain freeze, thanks for the correction.
/The Wheel of Time/ a new 'skin' on /The Lord of the Rings/.
.. a little scared to try anything related to the term 'Evercrack'.
.. 5, 6 hours a week, or is it going to draw in most of its players for heavy use gaming?
.. Metroid Prime is the best game I have ever played. Ever. And I'm a huge gaming nerd. This is a system seller. If you liked Super Metroid, I've NEVER come across a sequel that pushed the state of the art to the bleeding edge while keeping every single element from the original that made it awesome. It is the pinnicle of gaming and should be required playing for anybody interested in figuring out how to hit *only* the high notes of game design.
Yeah, I knew I got that wrong. An anagram is just another word with the letters rearranged, right?
> Calling this a new 'skin' of EverQuest is akin to calling Robert Jordan's
So I take it its a totally new engine unto itself. Cool, I wasn't sure.
BTW, I'm interested in hearing about success people have had in playing these games casually. I'm a massive FPS junkie, so I'm just recovering from that
Do you know anybody that plays these things like
One more thing, OT for the game nerds
its still worthwhile if your memory dump is 80 megs.
.. basically, if you subclassed off of this, it had methods for essentially serializing and deserializing from files. You could take any child object and just ship it to a file.
the tiny amount of dabbling I did with VC (I'm a *nix programmer) makes me recall the Serializable class
If the doc format in memory is a bunch of classes, they just need to mark off which ones have changed since the last save and serialize only those classes to disk.
Of course, I'm musing, I'm not sure, but I do have 4 years of C/C++ programming under my belt so I shouldn't be insanely off base here?
MSDNizens, time to correct this post. Go!
i dont follow everquest (after quake/teamfortress ruined my chances at an elec eng degree, no harm done) ... but whats the engine underneath this new Star Wars MMPORMGPROGSPORMPG? Somebody told me it was just a modded EQ engine, so isn't this more like an expansion pack or 'skin' rather than a whole new .. oh god dont make me try to figure out the anagram again ..
> They're kind of limited by the movies, aren't they?
Or books? Or comics? Or toys? My fanboy impression is they blew the lid off the 'movie constraints' a long time ago.
>I get the feeling that people are more interested in what's flashy than simple
;)
Get the feeling? You're only about 20 years behind microsoft's product development strategy.
Just as there are folks out there who will defend telemarketers, for the simple reason that most people dislike them and they feel compelled to defend them as individuals.
.. regardless of whether or not they have a legitimate point.
When people rail against telemarketing, they're railing against telemarketing (although people will often personify and channel their agnst towards the industry using the person that last called them, of course.) Similarly, when people diss MS, they're dissing what MS has made, not the people within MS. IE, you dont have to believe the pope is flawed to believe that christianity is flawed.
But why people jump in for MS is beyond me. With their kind of money and legal might, they have absolutely no need for anybody to defend them in the court of public opinion. I always wonder why folks waste their breath
I dunno what forums you hang out it, but the number of helpful, considerate *nix programmers far outweigh the snotty ones in my experience.
.. any chance that its specifically the Linux crowd that is snotty? I have to admit, the way some folks talk about Linux, its like nobody else had discovered the joys of free *nixes before Linux hit the mainstream. Sometimes they seem to forget that folks were quietly using BSDs long after the feeling of superiority one gets from leaving the well travelled path of least resistance had worn off.
Thats my 4+ years experience, but I guess everyones' milages do vary.
Disclaimer: I work on FreeBSD and not on Linux
Man, am I prickly today. :)
/. staff permission to read my mind, I can't complain if they post stuff that isn't news in my mind.
Theres also some IE patch every few weeks. Its not 'news' to me, but hey, until I give the
Just thank your lucky stars this is a cold medium, my friend. If you dont think its news, then it isn't. Skip to the next article, or go to another site.
.. once enough folks whine, /. will magically start publishing articles that constitute news to 99.999% of its readership? And we can all head off into the sunset?
Fuck, I dont call up my local paper and complain everytime theres an article in there that I'm not interested in. I can choose to read what I like, so I've no right to bitch about the content not being 'news' to me.
I wonder about you "this is news?" posters. I have to wonder what good it could possibly do to post "this is news?" posts instead of saving your time & typing for an article that actually interests you. That is, unless you want me to spam the threads of articles that interest *you*, but not me with, "wheres my news?" posts.
Whats the plan
Allow me to preface this by saying that I feel this way *regardless* of which platform you are developing for:
... otherwise you're just wasting people's time. Of course, if you actually *did* develop for *nix, you'd know that there are tons of good mailing lists out there with kind curteous professionals who dont mind answering your questions if they havn't already been answered in the manual.
.. once you're up to speed and can formulate intelligent questions that havn't been answered a million times before, that mechanic will be much more receptive towards helping you learn new things. Its a pretty natural dynamic, and one thats been around in pretty much any profession or industry.
Anybody who doesn't RTFM _before_ asking is asking for trouble. Doesn't matter what platform they're developing for. If you have time to code, you have the time to read the documentation, or a book, or
BUT, in the windows world, there are way more casual programmers who will help other casual programmers be lazy, in order to learn the bare minimum of what must be done to solve a problem. So people are generally more patient in the Windows world because there are less people who would apply the 'what should a professional do' metric against developers seeking help.
That doesn't make *nix developers elitist. Honest to god mechanics dont wanna stand around all day and explain how your engine works. If you're interested enough, you have time to learn the basics yourself
Windows has more casual developer support. I'm sure, by support, they mean, "number of people developing for that platform." Given the install base of Windows, it shouldn't be surprising that there are more people developing for Windows than Unix.
...
As for MSDN
Casual developers find MSDN is easier to use than looking through code themselves. Real developers find MSDN gets in the way of finding information. That there are more casual developers ('hacks', like screenwriters) than real developers should come as no surprise. Hobbiests or high-level hacks usually outweigh the professionals.