Although the West cannot reasonably be held responsible for this situation, I believe that we must be held to account for the fact that we're funneling huge sums of money into corrupt regimes around the planet...Oil money going to questionable (at best) nations exporting oppression, drug money going to criminal organizations worldwide, and all of the manufacturing being done in China.
Are we willing to change our lifestyles to deny our support to global criminals, or are we weak of mind and spirit?
Hello Bjorn... Looking at your arguments of why this is wrong: Fair compensation The terms of the GPL specifically allow, and do not place any restriction on what is to be done with any money collected for selling a binary with GPL code in it. The license just requires that the code be made available. If you wanted to have some different restrictions on future use, you should have chosen a different license. No sustainable competitive advantage Here you are just attacking their business plan. It is a borderline ad-hominem attack. You're saying that because they're bad businessmen, they're should be forbidden from doing what is allowed by the license. In fact, you are attacking, in this stroke, every commercial use of GPL code. A bit bold, perhaps? Alienation of contributors Charging is allowed under GPL. Really specifically allowed. I guess the reason that there are so few linux variants and so few OSS contributors is that there are companies selling linux distros, or license for enterprise linux. Limited user base This is another attack on them, saying that they don't care about the game because their actions are reducing the potential field of customers on the iphone. The customer base would be zero without them, and since all of their sources are free, somebody else (cough, you) could make it available for free. And yes, they would be powerless to stop you, and would have no right to feel upset at you if you did. You make your bed, you lie in it.
You seem attached to a "Free as in beer" definition of GPL, which is a view that gnu quite explicitly does not share with you. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Perhaps your problem is that you just chose the wrong license, and you should have made your own, rather than reusing a free license that didn't meet your needs. This is the price of trying for "Free as in beer". You get what you pay for, and you really have no say over what you get.
The Seattle P-I and SF Chronicle are on the chopping block...maybe the rest of the industry, too? What other Hearst properties have closed in the past few years?
They're a friggin monopoly. give them a "maximum allowable increase", they have zero incentive to not 'achieve'. Every resller markets themselves and then comes home to poppa, the ecosystem is theirs.
I cut my teeth as a console gamer. On an Atari 2600, Then a Colecovision. I admit, I never owned an intellivision, but I did get intellivision thumb.
I eventually became a PC gamer because that's where the action was with the C64 and Amiga (or my friend's mac) before I bought my first ludicrously expensive PC when I started working for a living, primarily to play games and get on the BBS scene. Fast forward a decade or two and I left a veritable scapheap of PC parts behind, mostly spent to waste time on games, since my masters provided my programming needs with 24x7 internet connected computers with dev tools.
From this, I can presume that I'm at this point a wizened geezer-gamer.
The universe has changed. PC games only get 3 things these days: - Sports - FPS - RTS
All of the inventive games happen either on the web as flash games, or on consoles.
I don't play FPS or RTS games any more. When my kid was 2 and he stumbled in on me playing counterstrike, I realized how....wrong....it all seemed in a broader sense. That gaming PC was the last I ever bought. Almost 7 years later, it's useless for 'gamerz', but it's still good enough for my kid to use for what little he uses a computer for.
I bought a Wii when they first came out.
It's fun.
I play with my kid, and I kick his ass, unless I want to make him feel good .
I now use a Macbook, because I pretty much just browse, email, etc...on my computer. And I like the feel of the hardware better than the Windows systems, and the OS better than Windows or Linux.
I and a fairly high percentage of the people in engineering I know would be describable as either Athiest, Agnostic, or unattached. In fact, I don't remember the last time I had any zealous religious conversation with any of my technical compatriots.
Then again, I live in the Bay Area, which is a little more diverse and likely also has a higher concentration of non-religious folk than most of the rest of the US at least.
The problem is that the taser has become the response of first resort many times in police actions. Annoy a cop? That's a tasing! Practice a little civil disobedience? That's a tasing!
When tasers came into use, the conceit was that they were for use when the only other option was to shoot to kill, thus making them a less lethal option. However, they have been used, in practice, as a mechanism for controlling a situation completely. This change in protocol is, in my opinion, nothing short of criminal. Think about it....The only time a taser should be used is IF THE POLICE WOULD HAVE SHOT WITH A FUCKING PISTOL rather than use the taser were they without it!
How many routine non-confrontational traffic stops end with a police shooting? A tasering? Different answer, eh? Annoying student asking impertinent questions? Time for a shooting? No, but we can taser him!
Fortunately, I haven't seen this happening in my native SF, but after all this crap, I really want to go for an explicit change to the laws to treat tasers the same as lethal weapons...they're more serious than a baton, and should only be used when, literally, the officers would othewise shoot.
By the way. In case you haven't watched pbs recently...in the space between shows, they do occasionally have some rather extensive "sponsored by" spots. They aren't the same tenor as normal commercials, but they do mention company names, products, etc... and can last for a minute
"This show has been brought to you by (blank), the makers of fine (crapola items)."
Me, I get my news from the crazy homeless guy on the corner, because I know that he's not tainted by association with or loyalto to any successful endeavor. It's also why I eat in restaurants that are empty and only ride the subway train at the back with nobody on it late at night.
Well, if people can have unnatural reverence for the IBM M Keyboard or Rotary Dial Phones, I see no reason why sticking by the virtues of the Amiga is to be shamed. However, just remember not to mumble too much when you stare at people.
I can't guarantee this, but I believe that I've purchased my last windows game already. It's consoles for me now, baybee.
Gettng a PC rigged out for games is kinda pricey, every year or two I gotta get a new video card or sit in the back of the bus, and they're still not as fun as most console games. PC games tend to be solitary. Even when you're playing with others, you're alone. (Yes, I'm discounting the lan party, due to the microscopic size of that subculture)
I'll just do without the games I can't play on a console.
Anyway, this coming from somebody who has already spent far far too much of my life and money on PC gaming.
It's mandatory policy where I work that all windows notebooks have hard-drive encryption on, and also run network backup software. They were pretty annoying about it, and I'm certain there are people who've avoided/evaded it, they pushed it on the whole company.
It doesn't really affect the devs on my team...they just remote in to the beefy tower under their desk to do builds...the notebook is essentially a terminal/email/comm client system for them.
Once I realized that at the end you could see each others guesses, I just went there and started entering random tags for the images, to confound and irritate my opponent.
I would like to think that the people were wondering why I entered things like "Walrus" or "Toaster" when a picture of a baby showed up, but in retrospect, they probably didn't bother looking at the images to see what I'd entered.
Philip Dick wrote a short story called Second Variety that was about intelligent, moving robotic 'mines' that had a way to distinguish friend from foe, and would seek out the enemy. If you haven't read the story, I recommend it, and afterward I think you'll agree with me in thinking that we don't want to go there.
Here in the US there are under-40 hour/week jobs available, but they're usually designed that way to be "part time" so that the employer doesn't need to offer benefits. You'll find them in retail (Can I help you find something?) and service jobs (Fries with that?)
So you get all the benefits of low hourly wages, no benefits, and you're replaceable, too!
I work in the software industry as well (not games), and we send out 'press kits' that include detailed product reviews, and all the rights to use the content without attribution. I've seen on more than one occasion a "real" review that was the exact copy of the reviewer's guide. I'd be surprised if the game previews didn't come with the same sorts of materials.
I found this when looking around from the one in Ontario you linked to. It's pretty cool looking, and whatever happened there seems to have left some significant lasting effects, considering that most of these circles are about a mile across or more each.
Where would I find out where the nature of this area is documented, and what trauma happened?
Slashdot Mirror
Although the West cannot reasonably be held responsible for this situation, I believe that we must be held to account for the fact that we're funneling huge sums of money into corrupt regimes around the planet...Oil money going to questionable (at best) nations exporting oppression, drug money going to criminal organizations worldwide, and all of the manufacturing being done in China.
Are we willing to change our lifestyles to deny our support to global criminals, or are we weak of mind and spirit?
It's awesome, and you can learn about global mythologies at the same time!
http://www.godchecker.com/
There's plenty of names to go around.
Hello Bjorn...
Looking at your arguments of why this is wrong:
Fair compensation
The terms of the GPL specifically allow, and do not place any restriction on what is to be done with any money collected for selling a binary with GPL code in it. The license just requires that the code be made available. If you wanted to have some different restrictions on future use, you should have chosen a different license.
No sustainable competitive advantage
Here you are just attacking their business plan. It is a borderline ad-hominem attack. You're saying that because they're bad businessmen, they're should be forbidden from doing what is allowed by the license. In fact, you are attacking, in this stroke, every commercial use of GPL code. A bit bold, perhaps?
Alienation of contributors
Charging is allowed under GPL. Really specifically allowed. I guess the reason that there are so few linux variants and so few OSS contributors is that there are companies selling linux distros, or license for enterprise linux.
Limited user base
This is another attack on them, saying that they don't care about the game because their actions are reducing the potential field of customers on the iphone. The customer base would be zero without them, and since all of their sources are free, somebody else (cough, you) could make it available for free. And yes, they would be powerless to stop you, and would have no right to feel upset at you if you did. You make your bed, you lie in it.
You seem attached to a "Free as in beer" definition of GPL, which is a view that gnu quite explicitly does not share with you. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Perhaps your problem is that you just chose the wrong license, and you should have made your own, rather than reusing a free license that didn't meet your needs. This is the price of trying for "Free as in beer". You get what you pay for, and you really have no say over what you get.
The Seattle P-I and SF Chronicle are on the chopping block...maybe the rest of the industry, too? What other Hearst properties have closed in the past few years?
Not just a band, but a band on the run.
As a fellow geezer, I hate to break it to you, but a fair portion of the population has never seen Ultima III, and even fewer know what M.U.L.E. is.
The kids these days, nothing before Halo ever existed.
http://www.buzzword.com/
Windows, OSX, Linux (including 64 bit with Player 10).
Share a document, allow multiple co-authors, change history...what more could you ask for?
Lead! Lead!
Whenever I'm offered an un-needed plastic bag, I say "No thanks, Save a Dinosaur"
They're a friggin monopoly. give them a "maximum allowable increase", they have zero incentive to not 'achieve'. Every resller markets themselves and then comes home to poppa, the ecosystem is theirs.
(sigh)
I cut my teeth as a console gamer.
On an Atari 2600, Then a Colecovision. I admit, I never owned an intellivision, but I did get intellivision thumb.
I eventually became a PC gamer because that's where the action was with the C64 and Amiga (or my friend's mac) before I bought my first ludicrously expensive PC when I started working for a living, primarily to play games and get on the BBS scene. Fast forward a decade or two and I left a veritable scapheap of PC parts behind, mostly spent to waste time on games, since my masters provided my programming needs with 24x7 internet connected computers with dev tools.
From this, I can presume that I'm at this point a wizened geezer-gamer.
The universe has changed. PC games only get 3 things these days:
- Sports
- FPS
- RTS
All of the inventive games happen either on the web as flash games, or on consoles.
I don't play FPS or RTS games any more. When my kid was 2 and he stumbled in on me playing counterstrike, I realized how....wrong....it all seemed in a broader sense. That gaming PC was the last I ever bought. Almost 7 years later, it's useless for 'gamerz', but it's still good enough for my kid to use for what little he uses a computer for.
I bought a Wii when they first came out.
It's fun.
I play with my kid, and I kick his ass, unless I want to make him feel good .
I now use a Macbook, because I pretty much just browse, email, etc...on my computer. And I like the feel of the hardware better than the Windows systems, and the OS better than Windows or Linux.
PC my ass.
I and a fairly high percentage of the people in engineering I know would be describable as either Athiest, Agnostic, or unattached. In fact, I don't remember the last time I had any zealous religious conversation with any of my technical compatriots.
Then again, I live in the Bay Area, which is a little more diverse and likely also has a higher concentration of non-religious folk than most of the rest of the US at least.
That's exactly what the cone of silence in Get Smart did, too, if you've ever seen it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLZKEre3yJ0
The problem is that the taser has become the response of first resort many times in police actions. Annoy a cop? That's a tasing! Practice a little civil disobedience? That's a tasing!
When tasers came into use, the conceit was that they were for use when the only other option was to shoot to kill, thus making them a less lethal option. However, they have been used, in practice, as a mechanism for controlling a situation completely. This change in protocol is, in my opinion, nothing short of criminal. Think about it....The only time a taser should be used is IF THE POLICE WOULD HAVE SHOT WITH A FUCKING PISTOL rather than use the taser were they without it!
How many routine non-confrontational traffic stops end with a police shooting? A tasering? Different answer, eh? Annoying student asking impertinent questions? Time for a shooting? No, but we can taser him!
Fortunately, I haven't seen this happening in my native SF, but after all this crap, I really want to go for an explicit change to the laws to treat tasers the same as lethal weapons...they're more serious than a baton, and should only be used when, literally, the officers would othewise shoot.
aaarrrgh!
By the way. In case you haven't watched pbs recently...in the space between shows, they do occasionally have some rather extensive "sponsored by" spots. They aren't the same tenor as normal commercials, but they do mention company names, products, etc... and can last for a minute
"This show has been brought to you by (blank), the makers of fine (crapola items)."
Me, I get my news from the crazy homeless guy on the corner, because I know that he's not tainted by association with or loyalto to any successful endeavor. It's also why I eat in restaurants that are empty and only ride the subway train at the back with nobody on it late at night.
Well, if people can have unnatural reverence for the IBM M Keyboard or Rotary Dial Phones, I see no reason why sticking by the virtues of the Amiga is to be shamed. However, just remember not to mumble too much when you stare at people.
I can't guarantee this, but I believe that I've purchased my last windows game already. It's consoles for me now, baybee.
Gettng a PC rigged out for games is kinda pricey, every year or two I gotta get a new video card or sit in the back of the bus, and they're still not as fun as most console games. PC games tend to be solitary. Even when you're playing with others, you're alone. (Yes, I'm discounting the lan party, due to the microscopic size of that subculture)
I'll just do without the games I can't play on a console.
Anyway, this coming from somebody who has already spent far far too much of my life and money on PC gaming.
It's mandatory policy where I work that all windows notebooks have hard-drive encryption on, and also run network backup software. They were pretty annoying about it, and I'm certain there are people who've avoided/evaded it, they pushed it on the whole company.
It doesn't really affect the devs on my team...they just remote in to the beefy tower under their desk to do builds...the notebook is essentially a terminal/email/comm client system for them.
Once I realized that at the end you could see each others guesses, I just went there and started entering random tags for the images, to confound and irritate my opponent.
I would like to think that the people were wondering why I entered things like "Walrus" or "Toaster" when a picture of a baby showed up, but in retrospect, they probably didn't bother looking at the images to see what I'd entered.
Philip Dick wrote a short story called Second Variety that was about intelligent, moving robotic 'mines' that had a way to distinguish friend from foe, and would seek out the enemy. If you haven't read the story, I recommend it, and afterward I think you'll agree with me in thinking that we don't want to go there.
Submitter has a bad case of Wikiphilia.
I wonder if it's related to Morgellons?
Here in the US there are under-40 hour/week jobs available, but they're usually designed that way to be "part time" so that the employer doesn't need to offer benefits. You'll find them in retail (Can I help you find something?) and service jobs (Fries with that?)
So you get all the benefits of low hourly wages, no benefits, and you're replaceable, too!
I work in the software industry as well (not games), and we send out 'press kits' that include detailed product reviews, and all the rights to use the content without attribution. I've seen on more than one occasion a "real" review that was the exact copy of the reviewer's guide. I'd be surprised if the game previews didn't come with the same sorts of materials.
I found this when looking around from the one in Ontario you linked to. It's pretty cool looking, and whatever happened there seems to have left some significant lasting effects, considering that most of these circles are about a mile across or more each.
Where would I find out where the nature of this area is documented, and what trauma happened?
In this case, they had the source, which tells me that the scientists that got caught weren't exactly the sharpest spoons in the drawer.
Here's a prior slashdot posting about mathematical techniques to identify photo manipulation. And another article detailing some techniques.