It might also be noted that games like World of Warcraft sometimes has problems when too many users get online at once. So, Sun is proposing massively INCREASING the load on the servers and having clients do much less -- this is going to solve something? Of course not. The servers are already buckling under the pressure. To move even more of the client processing to the servers is just stupid.
the Pentagon has a revised doctrine to be signed in the next few weeks would give the president the authority for a preemptive nuclear strike. I would hope that this is a move designed to say we mean business and then never use it, but the means is there for mutual assured destruction."
I think I would be more hopeful if Congress didn't also give the president the ability to authorize war against Iraq back in 2002. For some, this was seen as a way to show Iraq that we mean business. In fact, it was a means to invade Iraq. I certainly hope Bush doesn't follow the same pattern here as he did with Iraq.
October 11, 2002:
"In a major victory for the White House, the Senate early Friday voted 77-23 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refuses to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. resolutions."http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/11/ira q.us/
I thought thought he meant this: If you see him begin to depreciate the value of the software it implicitly means that he has begun counting it as an asset. If MS has begun counting the software as an asset, it means they're trying to do some accounting slight-of-hand in order to make things look better. How could they carry on for years like this? By adding different software assets in different years.
What about liability issues? When it was discovered that asbestos caused cancer, the company who manufactured it was liable. Who's liable if something goes wrong with open-source GM crops?
So, pirated games that do not appear in the list ARE legal? What on odd policy. How did that happen? "Pirated copies of Sims 2 are banned. However, pirated copies of Doom 3 will be legal." ???
"...when a corporation is naked, it is best to be buff."
When I first read this I thought it said "...when a corporation is naked, it is best to be in the buff." To which I thought, "Well, you don't have much of a choice, do you?"
I predict, with reasonable certainty, that the stock market index will increase over the next few decades. But, I can't predict whether it will move up or down today.
The problem is that it would only be available to relatively few people. People who could afford multimillion dollar fees (which might exist solely to keep out the riffraff) or people with key political connections.
Uh, what makes you think it would only be available to relatively few people and that the multimillion dollar fees "might exist solely to keep out the riffraff". Last I checked, most of the world works on capitalism (even if it's under-the-table capitalism). The idea that this treatment would be limited to "keep out the riffraff" or limited to people "with key political connections" is something that someone could've said about penacilin or heart surgery 50 or 100 years ago. Of course, things never quite worked out that way. But, yes, money may be a limiting factor in the number of people who could afford this treatment (just like heart surgery).
> Other factors of great interest include the massive US military budget compared to Europe's relatively small one
Interesting fact: France spends a larger percentage of it's GDP on the military than the US does.
Under law set by L. Paul Bremer (still in force so far as I know). Iraqi farmers are required to buy Licences from Monsanto before growing crops. They are, in fact forced to use genetically engineerd (and thus patented and copyrighted) seeds. Read it on/..
Or you could read it closely and notice that Iraqis are not forced to buy crops from Monsanto. Instead, what it says is that IF they use Monsanto GM seeds they have to comply with the licence. In other words, Iraq must comply with the same IP laws as the Western world. This is an ongoing struggle with the third world. Foreigners get really mad when they find out that their local pharmacutical factory, which is producing US-developed drugs with absolutely no compensation to the developer, has to start complying with copyright laws. It's stunning because they think they should be allowed to rip-off anything they want (because they're doing the production) and gleefully ignore the cost of development. It's like street vendors making copies of software that costs hundreds or thousands of dollars and getting mad that they aren't allowed to burn their own copies and sell them for a couple bucks. They argue "but I burned the copies myself!" as if they did something significant.
(1) Pause for a moment before going into "complain about big corporation" mode.
(2) Monsanto and the farmer had signed an agreement.
I think the bigger issue here, however, is the question of whether Monsanto should be doing this. Looking at this situaion from Monsanto's point of view, imagine spending hundreds of millions creating genetically modified plants. You sell them to one farmer. He turns around the every year and replants them. This means you make only one sale to each farmer. Now, it seems to me that Monsanto should probably have a two-tier system: buy the seeds for one season (cheap, but you have to buy them each year), or buy seed which you can replant, but you are limited to a specific number of acres each year. There are additional issues of "what happens to the licence when/if the farm is bought by someone else" (which is why a licence should be limited to a certain number of acres per year). And, Monsanto would probably like to prevent resale of the seeds (otherwise the farmers would become competitors with Monsanto, but with no development costs). It makes sense that Monsanto would opt for the "one year only, no replanting" clause because many farmers wouldn't be able to afford an ongoing licence. While you could argue that the one-year-only agreement is meant to suck as much money out of the farmer as possible, there are two things to note: (1) The farmer doesn't need to buy Monsanto, and (2) the fee is $6.50 per acre per year for soy. For a 500-acre farm (which seems like a reasonable family-sized farm) this works out to a little over $3000 per year. This doesn't seem excessive.
I'm sorry. What does this have to do with race? Nothing. This is about educated and poor foreigners competing for jobs with the locals. Race just happens to be correlated with being foreign. Turning this into a "racism" thing and complaining about the subjectivity of race ends up diverting attention from the realities of the situation.
Talking to the Americans, I say, "Racism is morally wrong. It is harmful both to recipient and to the racist. Knock that *%^&* off!"
Is it? Or is that just optimistic conjecture on your part? About 100 years ago here in Colorado a number of Chinese workers came and worked in the mines for next-to-nothing. Well, the european immigrants didn't like that one bit - they were forced to work for less money (a bare minimum to survive on) or lose their jobs. Not surprisingly, the european immigrants got angry and racist. Their lives would be better if the Chinese just left. Everytime they saw a Chinese person it was a reminder of the pain it was causing them. So, they ran them out. I'm sure it saved their jobs and their good wages. So, is racism harmful to recipient and racist? Of course not. There are obviously cases where racism is helpful to the racist. Take a step back and think about that. Then, consider ways to defeat racism with a clearer understanding of what it entails; sometimes it entails benefits for the racist. Deal with that fact. Don't pretend that racism is always "harmful both to the recipient and to the racist".
(Just logged in) I'm a lone coder. As I said, I also do the artwork for the game software I'm writing (fortunately, I'm capable of doing a good job). Patents aren't really a concern for me since I'm doing a variation on a wargame theme. If I were doing something very new, innovative, and lucrative, however, I would be more concerned. It's possible to make decent money as a lone coder and still stay off the radar screens of the corporate lawyers.
Someone else mentioned that lone coders don't have enough money to do marketing. I suppose that may be true in many cases, although it is possible to get a publisher and still be considered a "lone coder" (although publishers bring their own source of headaches).
There is also the issue of getting the software to market without it looking dated. I don't think this is a huge problem unless you are trying to create a very cutting-edge game which competes with the likes of Doom3. The longer time-to-market that a lone coder (sometimes) requires is mostly a problem from the perspective of competition getting there first. So, lone coders can benefit a great deal by finding new variations on a theme. If you have an idea that is obvious (like 3d massively-multiplayer games were before the advent of Everquest), then the lone coder is going to get to market too slowly to compete.
To underscore the point that lone coders can bring a good product to market, take a look at my software: http://www.empiresofsteel.com/
Slashdot Mirror
It might also be noted that games like World of Warcraft sometimes has problems when too many users get online at once. So, Sun is proposing massively INCREASING the load on the servers and having clients do much less -- this is going to solve something? Of course not. The servers are already buckling under the pressure. To move even more of the client processing to the servers is just stupid.
I bet it sucks when you step in the hole.
the Pentagon has a revised doctrine to be signed in the next few weeks would give the president the authority for a preemptive nuclear strike. I would hope that this is a move designed to say we mean business and then never use it, but the means is there for mutual assured destruction."
a q.us/
I think I would be more hopeful if Congress didn't also give the president the ability to authorize war against Iraq back in 2002. For some, this was seen as a way to show Iraq that we mean business. In fact, it was a means to invade Iraq. I certainly hope Bush doesn't follow the same pattern here as he did with Iraq.
October 11, 2002: "In a major victory for the White House, the Senate early Friday voted 77-23 to authorize President Bush to attack Iraq if Saddam Hussein refuses to give up weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. resolutions." http://archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/10/11/ir
Well, clearly what we need to do is support indie developers rather than buying a copy of the latest big game company offering!
Um, on a completely different note, did I mention that I'm in indie game developer? http://www.empiresofsteel.com/
I thought thought he meant this: If you see him begin to depreciate the value of the software it implicitly means that he has begun counting it as an asset. If MS has begun counting the software as an asset, it means they're trying to do some accounting slight-of-hand in order to make things look better. How could they carry on for years like this? By adding different software assets in different years.
What about liability issues? When it was discovered that asbestos caused cancer, the company who manufactured it was liable. Who's liable if something goes wrong with open-source GM crops?
www.empiresofsteel.com
Sourceforge is on the list? But... but... Bill Gates told me that open source is communism. How can China be against communism?
So, pirated games that do not appear in the list ARE legal? What on odd policy. How did that happen? "Pirated copies of Sims 2 are banned. However, pirated copies of Doom 3 will be legal."
???
"...when a corporation is naked, it is best to be buff."
When I first read this I thought it said "...when a corporation is naked, it is best to be in the buff." To which I thought, "Well, you don't have much of a choice, do you?"
I predict, with reasonable certainty, that the stock market index will increase over the next few decades. But, I can't predict whether it will move up or down today.
Funny, how that works, isn't it?
I'd take notes, but with my luck there would be very little chance that I'd be able to find them again in 10 billion years when I need them.
The problem is that it would only be available to relatively few people. People who could afford multimillion dollar fees (which might exist solely to keep out the riffraff) or people with key political connections.
Uh, what makes you think it would only be available to relatively few people and that the multimillion dollar fees "might exist solely to keep out the riffraff". Last I checked, most of the world works on capitalism (even if it's under-the-table capitalism). The idea that this treatment would be limited to "keep out the riffraff" or limited to people "with key political connections" is something that someone could've said about penacilin or heart surgery 50 or 100 years ago. Of course, things never quite worked out that way. But, yes, money may be a limiting factor in the number of people who could afford this treatment (just like heart surgery).
> Other factors of great interest include the massive US military budget compared to Europe's relatively small one Interesting fact: France spends a larger percentage of it's GDP on the military than the US does.
Under law set by L. Paul Bremer (still in force so far as I know). Iraqi farmers are required to buy Licences from Monsanto before growing crops. They are, in fact forced to use genetically engineerd (and thus patented and copyrighted) seeds. Read it on /..
Or you could read it closely and notice that Iraqis are not forced to buy crops from Monsanto. Instead, what it says is that IF they use Monsanto GM seeds they have to comply with the licence. In other words, Iraq must comply with the same IP laws as the Western world. This is an ongoing struggle with the third world. Foreigners get really mad when they find out that their local pharmacutical factory, which is producing US-developed drugs with absolutely no compensation to the developer, has to start complying with copyright laws. It's stunning because they think they should be allowed to rip-off anything they want (because they're doing the production) and gleefully ignore the cost of development. It's like street vendors making copies of software that costs hundreds or thousands of dollars and getting mad that they aren't allowed to burn their own copies and sell them for a couple bucks. They argue "but I burned the copies myself!" as if they did something significant.
(1) Pause for a moment before going into "complain about big corporation" mode.
(2) Monsanto and the farmer had signed an agreement.
I think the bigger issue here, however, is the question of whether Monsanto should be doing this. Looking at this situaion from Monsanto's point of view, imagine spending hundreds of millions creating genetically modified plants. You sell them to one farmer. He turns around the every year and replants them. This means you make only one sale to each farmer. Now, it seems to me that Monsanto should probably have a two-tier system: buy the seeds for one season (cheap, but you have to buy them each year), or buy seed which you can replant, but you are limited to a specific number of acres each year. There are additional issues of "what happens to the licence when/if the farm is bought by someone else" (which is why a licence should be limited to a certain number of acres per year). And, Monsanto would probably like to prevent resale of the seeds (otherwise the farmers would become competitors with Monsanto, but with no development costs). It makes sense that Monsanto would opt for the "one year only, no replanting" clause because many farmers wouldn't be able to afford an ongoing licence. While you could argue that the one-year-only agreement is meant to suck as much money out of the farmer as possible, there are two things to note: (1) The farmer doesn't need to buy Monsanto, and (2) the fee is $6.50 per acre per year for soy. For a 500-acre farm (which seems like a reasonable family-sized farm) this works out to a little over $3000 per year. This doesn't seem excessive.
http://www.empiresofsteel.com/
I'm sorry. What does this have to do with race? Nothing. This is about educated and poor foreigners competing for jobs with the locals. Race just happens to be correlated with being foreign. Turning this into a "racism" thing and complaining about the subjectivity of race ends up diverting attention from the realities of the situation.
Talking to the Americans, I say, "Racism is morally wrong. It is harmful both to recipient and to the racist. Knock that *%^&* off!"
Is it? Or is that just optimistic conjecture on your part? About 100 years ago here in Colorado a number of Chinese workers came and worked in the mines for next-to-nothing. Well, the european immigrants didn't like that one bit - they were forced to work for less money (a bare minimum to survive on) or lose their jobs. Not surprisingly, the european immigrants got angry and racist. Their lives would be better if the Chinese just left. Everytime they saw a Chinese person it was a reminder of the pain it was causing them. So, they ran them out. I'm sure it saved their jobs and their good wages. So, is racism harmful to recipient and racist? Of course not. There are obviously cases where racism is helpful to the racist. Take a step back and think about that. Then, consider ways to defeat racism with a clearer understanding of what it entails; sometimes it entails benefits for the racist. Deal with that fact. Don't pretend that racism is always "harmful both to the recipient and to the racist".
(Just logged in) I'm a lone coder. As I said, I also do the artwork for the game software I'm writing (fortunately, I'm capable of doing a good job). Patents aren't really a concern for me since I'm doing a variation on a wargame theme. If I were doing something very new, innovative, and lucrative, however, I would be more concerned. It's possible to make decent money as a lone coder and still stay off the radar screens of the corporate lawyers.
Someone else mentioned that lone coders don't have enough money to do marketing. I suppose that may be true in many cases, although it is possible to get a publisher and still be considered a "lone coder" (although publishers bring their own source of headaches).
There is also the issue of getting the software to market without it looking dated. I don't think this is a huge problem unless you are trying to create a very cutting-edge game which competes with the likes of Doom3. The longer time-to-market that a lone coder (sometimes) requires is mostly a problem from the perspective of competition getting there first. So, lone coders can benefit a great deal by finding new variations on a theme. If you have an idea that is obvious (like 3d massively-multiplayer games were before the advent of Everquest), then the lone coder is going to get to market too slowly to compete.
To underscore the point that lone coders can bring a good product to market, take a look at my software: http://www.empiresofsteel.com/