I remember using Minitel maybe 10 years ago when I lived in Paris briefly. It was nice because it was very, very focused. There were no banner ads, no flashy graphics, just plain text and enough buttons to get the job done. There's no technical reason we couldn't have the same thing on the Web, but because there is so much more you can do, we get sites like Amazon's (not to pick on them; they're all bad) with 500 options that take forever to load on slow connections and nobody really wants anyway. And don't even get me started on embedded Flash movies.
I recommend them to everyone i know and everyone i recommend it to buys it and likes it. If they can't make money off a product like that they should fire their entire business and marketing departments. It's like a restaurant that opens, is super busy, and closes 6 months later. That's a sign that somebody didn't think through the business plan. Here's a hint: when you're making up scenarios for that big Excel spreadsheet, and you add up the column for "Staggering Success", and the number at the bottom is still negative, it's time to get a new plan or at least a new spreadsheet.
This ("will not be making any money off of the original SMB 3 any more") is pretty untrue. If anything, the last few years have shown the marketing power that really good "retro" games (which don't even have to be that old) have. Re-branding old games is hot.
The sad part for Jerm et al. is that by this point, they're famous enough (at least around Austin) that they really don't need the name, but they're stuck with it now. I think if I was them I'd just change the name, but hey, who am I.
Those guys are really, really funny. I was nervous the first time I went, because the formula has potential to super-suck, but they're nuts. I saw Mac and Me, Dirty Dancing, and the Christmas Show. The Christmas Show is 10 out of 10. The "Itchy" segment alone (Star Wars Xmas Special) is worth the price of admission.
On a related note, for locals, the "original" or "headquarters" Drafthouse location is going to have to move because the leaseholders want to tear that block down and build a highrise.:[
i've lived in austin about 4 years, and it's a great city in general. the wireless is nice. some friends and i participarted this last weekend in a road rally where a lot of the clues were easier to answer with the internet available. we were careening around the city with 2 laptops in the car moving from hotspot to hotspot (spiderhouse, the public library, manuel's, etc.). it was a lot of fun.
Mr. Convenient-Mexican-Food-Product, stop with the blatant editorializing. Both I and my brother, die-hard trekkies extraordinaire (at least, to the point of watching the TV shows a lot:] ) really liked Insurrection. I think it's my brother's favorite ST movie (/flame on). Not that I expect to convince anyone else, but just a tip that some people out there liked that movie...
OK, so, there was a lot of hype around Java. But it really is pretty cool. We are using JNLP at work right now, which is exactly the "load on demand over the network" Java was hyped to be. And it works pretty well.
1) Obviously the article itself is rather hypocritical. As the author himself comes close to mentioning, the same is true of just about every content site. Witness that amazing article in Time magazine a while back where the author attempts to figure out who exactly he works for.
2) Regarding a "personal assurance" from the President of VA Linux: I think this misses the point. As the author mentions, it isn't about people any more, it's about stockholders. Nobody who works for VA Linux is in *any way in charge*. This is important to remember. As a public company, Slashdot and VA Linux are responsible to their shareholders - and that responsibility entails making money. The personal opinions or mores of anyone working for either company no longer matter, in a very real sense. That is why content sites often go the way of the commercial junk heap.
Two cents: 1) Obviously the article itself is rather hypocritical. As the author himself comes close to mentioning, the same is true of just about every content site. Witness that amazing article in Time magazine a while back where the author attempts to figure out who exactly he works for. 2) Regarding a "personal assurance" from the President of VA Linux: I think this misses the point. As the author mentions, it isn't about people any more, it's about stockholders. Nobody who works for VA Linux is in *any way in charge*. This is important to remember. As a public company, Slashdot and VA Linux are responsible to their shareholders - and that responsibility entails making money. The personal opinions or mores of anyone working for either company no longer matter, in a very real sense. That is why content sites often go the way of the commercial junk heap.
OK, I'm sure this has been covered before, but I'm slow so bear with me. I am abhorred at all of this, as are most of you, but honestly, I don't feel there's much I can do. One thing I know I *can* do, though, is give a few bucks. Let's say I wanted to assist this guy in his legal defense, or just contribute to the cause. Who would I give my money to? And how? --Adam
Smarter folks than I have beaten this death, so I'll be brief. Let me just say that, as someone with experience at a fairly mid-size programming house, that this is not a battle that supporters of the GPL and Open Source want to fight.
Let me state it thus: a corporation, and especially one which sells something as intangible as software, must live or die by its reputation. If there is one thing that companies fear about Open Source, it is a perceived lack of control over a product which requires a great deal of investment and risk to produce. Especially in today's lawsuit-happy society, to ask a company to forgo control over their product is to ensure marginalization.
Now, of course, this does not address the fully theoretical question of whether the GPL does or does not prohibit what has been discussed. And, of course, there are those who feel that the goal of Open Source software, whatever it may be, is most certainly *not* to encourage companies to use the results; in fact, there are those who would rather they not. I happen to disagree and find this a shortsighted view, but TEHO (To Each His Own).
Just consider if *you* were writing some GPLed code. In this "recognition-driven economy", your main benefit from XYZ 2.0 may be the recognition of your peers, based on your perceived reputation for quality, bug-free code. You would certainly "hoard" such code, making "closed source" modifications, distributed "in-house", until such time as you saw fit to release it - and rest assured, release it you would, for without an audience, the source is mostly meaningless. Project this onto a company and you might see what I mean. Certainly in my experience I have found that when the inclusion of GPLed code threatens to scuttle a project, it is the GPL which goes, and not the project.
Obviously it's difficult to say anything meaningful; smarter folks than I have hashed this out pretty well and IANAL, as always. But someone made a good point about the Judicial Opinion. Public opinion may not sway the judges' actual decision, but it could make him ask the wrong questions. Like Godel, Escher, Bach suggests, sometimes just asking the wrong question can derail an argument. If the judge starts asking questions like "Why do you want to encourage piracy?" or "Is copying DVDs protected under the first amendment?" he's on the wrong track. Better questions are things like "Does encryption keep people from copying DVDs?" or "What, exactly, does DeCSS let you do that you couldn't do before?" or the coup de grace, "What law/contract/right is it alleged that the defendants even broke in this case?" My two cents.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember using Minitel maybe 10 years ago when I lived in Paris briefly. It was nice because it was very, very focused. There were no banner ads, no flashy graphics, just plain text and enough buttons to get the job done. There's no technical reason we couldn't have the same thing on the Web, but because there is so much more you can do, we get sites like Amazon's (not to pick on them; they're all bad) with 500 options that take forever to load on slow connections and nobody really wants anyway. And don't even get me started on embedded Flash movies.
-shrug-
I recommend them to everyone i know and everyone i recommend it to buys it and likes it. If they can't make money off a product like that they should fire their entire business and marketing departments. It's like a restaurant that opens, is super busy, and closes 6 months later. That's a sign that somebody didn't think through the business plan. Here's a hint: when you're making up scenarios for that big Excel spreadsheet, and you add up the column for "Staggering Success", and the number at the bottom is still negative, it's time to get a new plan or at least a new spreadsheet.
This ("will not be making any money off of the original SMB 3 any more") is pretty untrue. If anything, the last few years have shown the marketing power that really good "retro" games (which don't even have to be that old) have. Re-branding old games is hot.
Jump To Lightspeed (the expansion to SWG) is also entering a public beta and should ship sometime soon.
The sad part for Jerm et al. is that by this point, they're famous enough (at least around Austin) that they really don't need the name, but they're stuck with it now. I think if I was them I'd just change the name, but hey, who am I.
:[
Those guys are really, really funny. I was nervous the first time I went, because the formula has potential to super-suck, but they're nuts. I saw Mac and Me, Dirty Dancing, and the Christmas Show. The Christmas Show is 10 out of 10. The "Itchy" segment alone (Star Wars Xmas Special) is worth the price of admission.
On a related note, for locals, the "original" or "headquarters" Drafthouse location is going to have to move because the leaseholders want to tear that block down and build a highrise.
i've lived in austin about 4 years, and it's a great city in general. the wireless is nice. some friends and i participarted this last weekend in a road rally where a lot of the clues were easier to answer with the internet available. we were careening around the city with 2 laptops in the car moving from hotspot to hotspot (spiderhouse, the public library, manuel's, etc.). it was a lot of fun.
Mr. Convenient-Mexican-Food-Product, stop with the blatant editorializing. Both I and my brother, die-hard trekkies extraordinaire (at least, to the point of watching the TV shows a lot :] ) really liked Insurrection. I think it's my brother's favorite ST movie (/flame on). Not that I expect to convince anyone else, but just a tip that some people out there liked that movie...
OK, so, there was a lot of hype around Java. But it really is pretty cool. We are using JNLP at work right now, which is exactly the "load on demand over the network" Java was hyped to be. And it works pretty well.
Two cents:
1) Obviously the article itself is rather hypocritical. As the author himself comes close to mentioning, the same is true of just about every content site. Witness that amazing article in Time magazine a while back where the author attempts to figure out who exactly he works for.
2) Regarding a "personal assurance" from the President of VA Linux: I think this misses the point. As the author mentions, it isn't about people any more, it's about stockholders. Nobody who works for VA Linux is in *any way in charge*. This is important to remember. As a public company, Slashdot and VA Linux are responsible to their shareholders - and that responsibility entails making money. The personal opinions or mores of anyone working for either company no longer matter, in a very real sense. That is why content sites often go the way of the commercial junk heap.
Two cents: 1) Obviously the article itself is rather hypocritical. As the author himself comes close to mentioning, the same is true of just about every content site. Witness that amazing article in Time magazine a while back where the author attempts to figure out who exactly he works for. 2) Regarding a "personal assurance" from the President of VA Linux: I think this misses the point. As the author mentions, it isn't about people any more, it's about stockholders. Nobody who works for VA Linux is in *any way in charge*. This is important to remember. As a public company, Slashdot and VA Linux are responsible to their shareholders - and that responsibility entails making money. The personal opinions or mores of anyone working for either company no longer matter, in a very real sense. That is why content sites often go the way of the commercial junk heap.
OK, I'm sure this has been covered before, but I'm slow so bear with me. I am abhorred at all of this, as are most of you, but honestly, I don't feel there's much I can do. One thing I know I *can* do, though, is give a few bucks. Let's say I wanted to assist this guy in his legal defense, or just contribute to the cause. Who would I give my money to? And how? --Adam
Smarter folks than I have beaten this death, so I'll be brief. Let me just say that, as someone with experience at a fairly mid-size programming house, that this is not a battle that supporters of the GPL and Open Source want to fight.
Let me state it thus: a corporation, and especially one which sells something as intangible as software, must live or die by its reputation. If there is one thing that companies fear about Open Source, it is a perceived lack of control over a product which requires a great deal of investment and risk to produce. Especially in today's lawsuit-happy society, to ask a company to forgo control over their product is to ensure marginalization.
Now, of course, this does not address the fully theoretical question of whether the GPL does or does not prohibit what has been discussed. And, of course, there are those who feel that the goal of Open Source software, whatever it may be, is most certainly *not* to encourage companies to use the results; in fact, there are those who would rather they not. I happen to disagree and find this a shortsighted view, but TEHO (To Each His Own).
Just consider if *you* were writing some GPLed code. In this "recognition-driven economy", your main benefit from XYZ 2.0 may be the recognition of your peers, based on your perceived reputation for quality, bug-free code. You would certainly "hoard" such code, making "closed source" modifications, distributed "in-house", until such time as you saw fit to release it - and rest assured, release it you would, for without an audience, the source is mostly meaningless. Project this onto a company and you might see what I mean. Certainly in my experience I have found that when the inclusion of GPLed code threatens to scuttle a project, it is the GPL which goes, and not the project.
My $.02, and as always, IANAL.
Adam
Obviously it's difficult to say anything meaningful; smarter folks than I have hashed this out pretty well and IANAL, as always. But someone made a good point about the Judicial Opinion. Public opinion may not sway the judges' actual decision, but it could make him ask the wrong questions. Like Godel, Escher, Bach suggests, sometimes just asking the wrong question can derail an argument. If the judge starts asking questions like "Why do you want to encourage piracy?" or "Is copying DVDs protected under the first amendment?" he's on the wrong track. Better questions are things like "Does encryption keep people from copying DVDs?" or "What, exactly, does DeCSS let you do that you couldn't do before?" or the coup de grace, "What law/contract/right is it alleged that the defendants even broke in this case?" My two cents.