Armored Core always gets mediocre reviews. It's like a rule or something.
But the GGP poster didn't ask for exclusives - just for games worth playing... Not that it matters, AC Zombie doesn't discriminate, he just hungers, hungers for Armored Core....
(Armored Core Zombie prefers Kawamori-infused Armored Core, but Armored Core Zombie will take what Armored Core Zombie can get...)
It'd be at least twice as large. Even the smallest DVD player is larger than the discs that go inside it, right? The PSP is already quite large enough. As a portable, if the thing is on the large end of the spectrum already, making it twice as big makes it less than half as useful.
Better to use something else to play DVD video - whether it's something that can output its video to the PSP screen, or a converter that could store video on a memory stick or hard drive - whatever. The PSP has a fine screen for video but it has no business integrating a big DVD drive.
(And a great big cookie to anybody who gets the reference in the subject line!)
The "paradox" is that people are playing the portable system at home. It's not really a paradox, it just means that the ability to take a portable system elsewhere is not the only good reason to use a portable. I think this is significant (if you accept the idea - and I do) because the PSP is a bit large for a portable system - but also very powerful for a portable. If you look at it as a machine you're gonna take places, it may seem unwieldy - but if you look at it as a machine you'll use at home, it's convenient and the feature set is not too shabby....
I can definitely relate to the urge to play a portable game system at home - in some ways it's just less hassle than booting up the PS2, taking over the TV, etc. I play the DS at home a lot, it's nice and self-contained, which is especially advantageous since I just moved and most of my stuff is all jumbled aboot.
I'm a model kit hobbyist so this is rather interesting to me. Basically the model kit industry has been dying, gradually, for a while now, due to a variety of reasons. Basically, once upon a time, a model kit was a very cost-effective way to deliver a product that was superior to anything pre-made off-the-shelf. But manufacture of pre-made items (toys, etc.) has become a lot more sophisticated and the results are more intricate and more accurate. For that reason, among others, consumer expectations are changing - expecting less work and better results. Plus I think the manufacturers' expectations have changed, demanding higher volume of sales for a product to be worth their while.
Now, in the mean time, scratchbuilders' methods are becoming more efficient, and more automated. Computers and 3-D software are a big help when people make things on their own, even without a 3-D printer. It's becoming more common these days for people to design parts for a garage kit on the computer and use a milling machine to generate the actual parts. There will, no doubt, come a point when home-printing makes injection-molded kits and resin garage kits cease to be viable. As a model builder I find this to be an interesting scenario, but also a little scary in that I like my hobby and don't want the practice of it to end. I mean, what kinds of things will we see, once the technical obstacles to creating and distributing a model are removed? But, on the other hand, if people can just print parts, does that mean they're not going to be sculpting them any more? I'm sure people will still sculpt and build things, but I feel like the process of building models is getting taken farther and farther away from the process where the modeler makes things. At what point can one no longer claim to have "made" something?
'Course, 3-D printing is one thing - painting is another. Even if you suppose home 3-D printers are going to be able to do color - it'll probably be some time before they're able to match the quality of today's vinyl figures and die-cast toys, let alone current hobby-painted models or future mass-produced toys. How long will it take for color 3-D printers to be able to create good metallic effects? Kandy color schemes? Pearl effects? Smooth gradients? Precisely-controlled gloss/matte application? Fine recessed, darkened panel lines or faux rivets? Paint chip effects? Current home color printers tend to have a lot of visible color dithering when you're working in scale - even homemade decals for something big like a 1:350 Starship Enterprise have visible precision problems on the line edges, and clearly visible color dithering for any colors that the printer can't match exactly. In terms of model kits there's also the question of the precision with which the parts are replicated - if you're doing something along the lines of a Gundam internal frame, for instance, the parts have to be fairly precise or the joints won't work right. There are ways around that (for instance, making the "working parts" standardized, and sold separately - like aftermarket polycaps are today) but I think this is an area where injection molding by companies like Bandai will continue to enjoy a comfortable advantage for some time.
I'm sure eventually home printing will solve all those problems, too - but in the mean time, I guess the future outlook for the hobby is a period where kits die and home-printed kits take over - and if home-printing is affordable it could mean a new boom for the hobby. Hobbyists would buy "kits" just like before, except manufacturers would find it much less costly to release a kit (and releasing a kit in this way would be cheaper than producing a completed or "toy" version), so things like Star Trek model kits would see a comeback, and series like Babylon 5 or BSG would get a lot more kits released. Limitations in home-printing could mean that the products would be more crude, at least until home printing gets really, really good. And then, the ease of letting the 3-D printer do all the work will pretty much kill off the hobby again, and people will either buy pre-completed items or accept the best their 3-D printer can do as "good enough"...
Dude, that is such a completely wasteful scenario.
First, as has already been mentioned, in most cases the burglar doesn't need to duplicate the key - they can just keep it and use it. Returning your key to you and using their duplicate might be worthwhile if they felt the need to catch you off-guard - like waiting until you're away on vacation (if your key is recovered, you might not think it worthwhile to change the locks - while if the key is not recovered you're more likely to change the locks.) - but otherwise there's not a lot of good reasons to return that key, and a few reasons why it might be a bad idea.
Second, using 3-D scanning and printing to generate a duplicate key? What a phenomenal waste! - Most keys are based on standard blanks - which means if you get a blank you just need to reproduce the notch pattern to generate a working key. As a result the means for duplicating keys is very cheap - it's just a guided grinder tool. So fabricating the entire key is pretty much a waste of time. - There are easier, quicker ways of taking an image of a key than scanning it. Think low-tech. Seen "Night at the Museum"? You can make an impression of the key in a mold material (a user-friendly RTV mold rubber maybe, though clay or wax might work just as well for a one-side mold) and then castings made in the mold could be copied to a key blank. I expect you could even do this with a good photograph of the key: turn the photo into a black-and-white image, with black on the key areas and white elsewhere, and use it to either grind a blank by hand, or use metal etching to produce a flat key with the notch pattern on it, and then copy that copy onto a blank. - Don't forget the time-honored tradition of lock-picking, either. Mechanical locks are rather limited in the security they can offer. - And then, let's remember that you don't need a key to enter someone's home. Most people don't have alarms (if they do, then the key's not going to help you with the alarm), but even when they do, the house itself is generally not a fortress. Windows can be broken, doors can be cut or broken, etc. If someone thinks it's worth their time and the associated risks in order to get in, they can get in.
Re:Securing a wireless router and using the NDS...
on
WEP Broken Even Worse
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· Score: 1
Yeah, I figured the solution would be from one of the replacement firmwares - before I posted I dug around a bit on the DD-WRT site looking for information on this kind of functionality - I couldn't even find "WEP" when doing a search of their wiki...
I was thinking, though, instead of using a different transition for each slide, I could transition each slide using the scene transition hit from the old Transformers show! "DA DA-DA, DA-DAAAAAAAAAA!"
Re:Securing a wireless router and using the NDS...
on
WEP Broken Even Worse
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· Score: 2, Interesting
So, for instance, the laptops of the house would all use WPA and the NDS would use WEP?
That wouldn't really increase the overall security of the network. If somebody wanted to break in, he'd just crack the WEP encryption.. I am aware of that flaw. However, I'm attempting to make the best of a bad situation - a perfect solution is not possible.
The idea is that by having the NDS and only the NDS use WEP, the opportunities for sniffing WEP packets will be limited to those times when someone's accessing the network with an NDS - as opposed to when one of our unwired computers is on (and presumably doing some net activity, either in the foreground or background), which is pretty much all the time. So if someone wanted to break in, they'd need to find out when I play Mario Kart, and do it then. Still quite feasible, but the vast majority of wireless network traffic in the household would not be using WEP, and most of the time there'd just be no WEP traffic to monitor, no WEP packets to request resend of, etc.
And then, also, there's the maintenance issues of that setup: if I monitor the activity over the WEP from time to time and want to update the key or block out WEP for a while, or do something else to shake off freeloaders - only the NDS would be affected. The laptops and such would go on happily using WPA, which is at least reasonably secure.
So, again, my question is not "is this setup secure?", it's "is this setup possible?" Or would the separate control of access methods require a separate set of hardware?
Securing a wireless router and using the NDS...
on
WEP Broken Even Worse
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· Score: 1
disable wireless security and implement real security, such as a RADIUS login. then set up a firewall rule to allow unauthenticated devices to access nintendo's servers Not too shabby. Question for ya, though: Does all the traffic for those NDS games go through the Nintendo servers, or is it routed straight to the other players? Sending packets directly playerplayer would be faster but it would also make it harder to deal with NAT and firewalls, I suppose...
And can you actually make a wireless router accept both secured and unsecured connections (or WPA and WEP connections) at the same time? So, for instance, the laptops of the house would all use WPA and the NDS would use WEP?
Imagine my surprise when I heard that Miyamoto Usagi was giving advice to game design hopefuls! What, one might ask, could an anthropormorphic rabbit ronin have to teach us about games? Let alone one who supposedly lived almost four hundred years ago...
Then again, I guess you could think of Usagi as someone who studies life and the world around him - perhaps we could learn many things from his unique perspective!
Some Mexican classrooms adopt wrestling masks. They say the use of a uniform dress code helps students' concentration, and since the teachers are usually bigger than the students, nobody starts any trouble.
Of course, you realize that since there's a runner running the Boston Marathon in space, all normal space travel routes will have to be closed, satellites will need to be stopped for several hours or directed in long, convoluted, indirect routes to their destinations - and even then possibly get "stuck" somewhere, unable to proceed until the marathon's over - and any orbiting satellites trapped by this process will be subject to ticketing by the Boston Police for parking violations.
If their words don't do enough alone, these musicians should set their words to song, and unleash a mighty ballad with the power to solve the world's problems. Just like "We Are the World", only about Net Neutrality, instead of about... the world and stuff...
And who can forget the protest songs of the 1990s and early 2000s? All those protest marches in DC, with the youth of America singing in unison, "This function is void, it takes two parameters..."
But as impressive as those mass protests are, it always comes down to just one person - one person with the spirit and vision to pursue his dreams of peace, love, and music, in spite of all odds. One person to charge out onto the battlefields of the world with his guitar, shouting "Ore no uta o kike!" Hear my song! And put an end to your senseless conflicts. This man will be the leader, and the rest may at first question his methods or his senses but ultimately they'll all be singing his song.
Though when someone's beating me in Mario Kart, and stops at the finish line, waits 'til I get there, and then turns around and crosses it driving backwards, that sends a pretty clear message.:) What message? That you can't snake worth a darn? Something like that... I'm actually reasonably good at the game - good enough to beat the Nintendo Ghost data on Yoshi Falls and a few other tracks, anyway (though not consistently) - there are just racers who are better at the game than I am, and sometimes they taunt me when they beat me very badly.:) I don't mind losing, but I don't like when people are dicks about it....though I hate that the game breaks down to that "snaking" process. Powerslide boost should be a little bonus for getting around corners efficiently, not for hopping around on straightaways.
And then the whole point of communication in game is moot. Well, you also don't get communication in DS games for the most part...
Though when someone's beating me in Mario Kart, and stops at the finish line, waits 'til I get there, and then turns around and crosses it driving backwards, that sends a pretty clear message.:)
Creating free software is a gift, of sorts. You are providing the fruits of your time and effort for no charge and with few strings attached. Hence, you're "giving it away". And distribution is just another form of use. If I use a piece of software to create another piece of software, or build on it to create a larger "meta-package" - that falls under "distribution" but from my perspective it's just use. Can I use that software to accomplish what I want to accomplish, or not? I am not confused, though my word choice may sometimes be flawed.
My point about the goals being incompatible was simply that they are in partial opposition to each other. Restrictions on the use of a gift limit a gift's usefulness - that is a fact, though the importance of the fact depends a lot on the circumstances. But at some point the granularity of control you assert has to end - and even if a further degree of granularity in the control doesn't significantly impact the actual rights imparted to users of the code, the added complexity in the definition of those rights makes it more complicated to determine whether the software is usable, and more likely that some clause will create an incompatibility with the license, whether that was the intent of the license or not. What happens, for instance, if a GPL-like license asserts that, not only do derivative works need to be likewise-licensed, but also published in a manner and timetable defined by the software authors? (To prevent things like the KHTML/Safari issue, where Apple published their changes to KHTML but didn't do much to do it in a way that the KDE people could actually use...) - then it becomes much harder to use that licensed code, because the group granting the license could change at whim what defines compliance. GPLv3 isn't doing anything like that as far as I know, but it's asserting its protections more aggressively in other areas. I was making a rather abstract point - that attempting to completely protect GPL-style ideals with a rigorously worded license limits the usability of the licensed code, possibly more than the protection is worth. A license has to exist as a compromise between the goals of usability and protection, and it's always going to be an imperfect compromise. I call it an "abstract point" because it's not something I'd relate specifically to one of the new protections of GPLv3 - it's something I'd apply to the overall direction GPLv3 has moved, and what I think that change could imply if taken too far.
As I said, I believe that these issues are going to be resolved, one way or another - and a lot of it may simply be a matter of time, for people to get used to the new GPL.
What I mean is that the goals of giving away software and maintaining control over it are, at some level, not entirely compatible. Restrictions in the GPL do have the potential to prevent people from taking advantage of your software - some liberties are denied in order to protect others - I have accepted that trade-off in general, for roughly the reasons they were added to the license in the first place - but as more restrictions are being added to the license I must come to terms with them - and ultimately embrace them or not.
Extreme (degenerate) cases of this trade-off, of course, would be that you give your software freely but don't actually let anyone do anything with it - or you let people do whatever they want, in which case the protections we enjoy in licenses like GPL don't work. GPL has to live in between the extremes, as do all licenses (even BSD license has some restrictions) - it's technically correct, but maybe misleading, to say GPL is getting closer to one of the extremes - GPLv3 is more restrictive than GPLv2, but relative to the infinite potential for becoming more restrictive, it hasn't moved far at all. But nonetheless some, myself included, wonder from time to time whether the GPLv3 is too restrictive. The potential danger of a license that's too restrictive is that people simply won't use it - that they'll stick with GPLv2 (and possibly face legal loopholes of that document being exploited), or they'll choose another license (which may be even more vulnerable), etc. I want GPL to exist as a strong license and one that people will actually use - so that the collection of software that benefits from its protection will continue to grow. I do believe that's how it will be in the end, but the process of getting to that point - where people will generally feel as comfortable with the GPLv3 as they were with GPLv2 - it may just be a matter of time, or it may take more change to the GPL.
It's not as though I'm laying down the law here - saying that gifts must be given freely - I'm just talking about my perspective, and how I feel about the license, and the general question of what it really means to give something away while retaining control over it. It's not my goal to cast FUD, it's just that to me this isn't an entirely simple matter. I'd rather talk about my current perspective than keep my mouth shut.:) I think it's more interesting that way.
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You can't incorporate the DVD drive, the PSP screen, the PSP battery, and the PSP controls in a package that size.
Or if you, personally, can, then I would indeed be impressed.
Armored Core always gets mediocre reviews. It's like a rule or something.
But the GGP poster didn't ask for exclusives - just for games worth playing... Not that it matters, AC Zombie doesn't discriminate, he just hungers, hungers for Armored Core....
(Armored Core Zombie prefers Kawamori-infused Armored Core, but Armored Core Zombie will take what Armored Core Zombie can get...)
Armored... Core...
ARMORED... CORE...
Armored... RAVEN! RAVEN! AAUGH! Aaa -
armored... core...
It'd be at least twice as large. Even the smallest DVD player is larger than the discs that go inside it, right? The PSP is already quite large enough. As a portable, if the thing is on the large end of the spectrum already, making it twice as big makes it less than half as useful.
Better to use something else to play DVD video - whether it's something that can output its video to the PSP screen, or a converter that could store video on a memory stick or hard drive - whatever. The PSP has a fine screen for video but it has no business integrating a big DVD drive.
Well, Mars needs women, we need bookshelves. Until we get the needed storage furniture most of the stuff got no place to go.
(And a great big cookie to anybody who gets the reference in the subject line!)
The "paradox" is that people are playing the portable system at home. It's not really a paradox, it just means that the ability to take a portable system elsewhere is not the only good reason to use a portable. I think this is significant (if you accept the idea - and I do) because the PSP is a bit large for a portable system - but also very powerful for a portable. If you look at it as a machine you're gonna take places, it may seem unwieldy - but if you look at it as a machine you'll use at home, it's convenient and the feature set is not too shabby....
I think they didn't make the PSP accept full-size DVDs because that would, you know, make the machine considerably larger...
UMD video is pretty dumb, though - like why do I want to buy another copy of a movie in a lower-resolution format?
Game library could definitely use some work - but there are some cool titles out for the machine, like the Rockman X remake, Loco Roco, and Mercury...
I can definitely relate to the urge to play a portable game system at home - in some ways it's just less hassle than booting up the PS2, taking over the TV, etc. I play the DS at home a lot, it's nice and self-contained, which is especially advantageous since I just moved and most of my stuff is all jumbled aboot.
They said a new box - so if anything it'd be a sister, or a daughter. :)
:P'
Parent post is too funny to be "troll" IMO.
I'm a model kit hobbyist so this is rather interesting to me. Basically the model kit industry has been dying, gradually, for a while now, due to a variety of reasons. Basically, once upon a time, a model kit was a very cost-effective way to deliver a product that was superior to anything pre-made off-the-shelf. But manufacture of pre-made items (toys, etc.) has become a lot more sophisticated and the results are more intricate and more accurate. For that reason, among others, consumer expectations are changing - expecting less work and better results. Plus I think the manufacturers' expectations have changed, demanding higher volume of sales for a product to be worth their while.
Now, in the mean time, scratchbuilders' methods are becoming more efficient, and more automated. Computers and 3-D software are a big help when people make things on their own, even without a 3-D printer. It's becoming more common these days for people to design parts for a garage kit on the computer and use a milling machine to generate the actual parts. There will, no doubt, come a point when home-printing makes injection-molded kits and resin garage kits cease to be viable. As a model builder I find this to be an interesting scenario, but also a little scary in that I like my hobby and don't want the practice of it to end. I mean, what kinds of things will we see, once the technical obstacles to creating and distributing a model are removed? But, on the other hand, if people can just print parts, does that mean they're not going to be sculpting them any more? I'm sure people will still sculpt and build things, but I feel like the process of building models is getting taken farther and farther away from the process where the modeler makes things. At what point can one no longer claim to have "made" something?
'Course, 3-D printing is one thing - painting is another. Even if you suppose home 3-D printers are going to be able to do color - it'll probably be some time before they're able to match the quality of today's vinyl figures and die-cast toys, let alone current hobby-painted models or future mass-produced toys. How long will it take for color 3-D printers to be able to create good metallic effects? Kandy color schemes? Pearl effects? Smooth gradients? Precisely-controlled gloss/matte application? Fine recessed, darkened panel lines or faux rivets? Paint chip effects? Current home color printers tend to have a lot of visible color dithering when you're working in scale - even homemade decals for something big like a 1:350 Starship Enterprise have visible precision problems on the line edges, and clearly visible color dithering for any colors that the printer can't match exactly. In terms of model kits there's also the question of the precision with which the parts are replicated - if you're doing something along the lines of a Gundam internal frame, for instance, the parts have to be fairly precise or the joints won't work right. There are ways around that (for instance, making the "working parts" standardized, and sold separately - like aftermarket polycaps are today) but I think this is an area where injection molding by companies like Bandai will continue to enjoy a comfortable advantage for some time.
I'm sure eventually home printing will solve all those problems, too - but in the mean time, I guess the future outlook for the hobby is a period where kits die and home-printed kits take over - and if home-printing is affordable it could mean a new boom for the hobby. Hobbyists would buy "kits" just like before, except manufacturers would find it much less costly to release a kit (and releasing a kit in this way would be cheaper than producing a completed or "toy" version), so things like Star Trek model kits would see a comeback, and series like Babylon 5 or BSG would get a lot more kits released. Limitations in home-printing could mean that the products would be more crude, at least until home printing gets really, really good. And then, the ease of letting the 3-D printer do all the work will pretty much kill off the hobby again, and people will either buy pre-completed items or accept the best their 3-D printer can do as "good enough"...
Dude, that is such a completely wasteful scenario.
First, as has already been mentioned, in most cases the burglar doesn't need to duplicate the key - they can just keep it and use it. Returning your key to you and using their duplicate might be worthwhile if they felt the need to catch you off-guard - like waiting until you're away on vacation (if your key is recovered, you might not think it worthwhile to change the locks - while if the key is not recovered you're more likely to change the locks.) - but otherwise there's not a lot of good reasons to return that key, and a few reasons why it might be a bad idea.
Second, using 3-D scanning and printing to generate a duplicate key? What a phenomenal waste!
- Most keys are based on standard blanks - which means if you get a blank you just need to reproduce the notch pattern to generate a working key. As a result the means for duplicating keys is very cheap - it's just a guided grinder tool. So fabricating the entire key is pretty much a waste of time.
- There are easier, quicker ways of taking an image of a key than scanning it. Think low-tech. Seen "Night at the Museum"? You can make an impression of the key in a mold material (a user-friendly RTV mold rubber maybe, though clay or wax might work just as well for a one-side mold) and then castings made in the mold could be copied to a key blank. I expect you could even do this with a good photograph of the key: turn the photo into a black-and-white image, with black on the key areas and white elsewhere, and use it to either grind a blank by hand, or use metal etching to produce a flat key with the notch pattern on it, and then copy that copy onto a blank.
- Don't forget the time-honored tradition of lock-picking, either. Mechanical locks are rather limited in the security they can offer.
- And then, let's remember that you don't need a key to enter someone's home. Most people don't have alarms (if they do, then the key's not going to help you with the alarm), but even when they do, the house itself is generally not a fortress. Windows can be broken, doors can be cut or broken, etc. If someone thinks it's worth their time and the associated risks in order to get in, they can get in.
Yeah, I figured the solution would be from one of the replacement firmwares - before I posted I dug around a bit on the DD-WRT site looking for information on this kind of functionality - I couldn't even find "WEP" when doing a search of their wiki...
I was thinking, though, instead of using a different transition for each slide, I could transition each slide using the scene transition hit from the old Transformers show! "DA DA-DA, DA-DAAAAAAAAAA!"
That wouldn't really increase the overall security of the network. If somebody wanted to break in, he'd just crack the WEP encryption.. I am aware of that flaw. However, I'm attempting to make the best of a bad situation - a perfect solution is not possible.
The idea is that by having the NDS and only the NDS use WEP, the opportunities for sniffing WEP packets will be limited to those times when someone's accessing the network with an NDS - as opposed to when one of our unwired computers is on (and presumably doing some net activity, either in the foreground or background), which is pretty much all the time. So if someone wanted to break in, they'd need to find out when I play Mario Kart, and do it then. Still quite feasible, but the vast majority of wireless network traffic in the household would not be using WEP, and most of the time there'd just be no WEP traffic to monitor, no WEP packets to request resend of, etc.
And then, also, there's the maintenance issues of that setup: if I monitor the activity over the WEP from time to time and want to update the key or block out WEP for a while, or do something else to shake off freeloaders - only the NDS would be affected. The laptops and such would go on happily using WPA, which is at least reasonably secure.
So, again, my question is not "is this setup secure?", it's "is this setup possible?" Or would the separate control of access methods require a separate set of hardware?
And can you actually make a wireless router accept both secured and unsecured connections (or WPA and WEP connections) at the same time? So, for instance, the laptops of the house would all use WPA and the NDS would use WEP?
Imagine my surprise when I heard that Miyamoto Usagi was giving advice to game design hopefuls! What, one might ask, could an anthropormorphic rabbit ronin have to teach us about games? Let alone one who supposedly lived almost four hundred years ago...
Then again, I guess you could think of Usagi as someone who studies life and the world around him - perhaps we could learn many things from his unique perspective!
Some Mexican classrooms adopt wrestling masks. They say the use of a uniform dress code helps students' concentration, and since the teachers are usually bigger than the students, nobody starts any trouble.
Of course, you realize that since there's a runner running the Boston Marathon in space, all normal space travel routes will have to be closed, satellites will need to be stopped for several hours or directed in long, convoluted, indirect routes to their destinations - and even then possibly get "stuck" somewhere, unable to proceed until the marathon's over - and any orbiting satellites trapped by this process will be subject to ticketing by the Boston Police for parking violations.
If their words don't do enough alone, these musicians should set their words to song, and unleash a mighty ballad with the power to solve the world's problems. Just like "We Are the World", only about Net Neutrality, instead of about... the world and stuff...
And who can forget the protest songs of the 1990s and early 2000s? All those protest marches in DC, with the youth of America singing in unison, "This function is void, it takes two parameters..."
But as impressive as those mass protests are, it always comes down to just one person - one person with the spirit and vision to pursue his dreams of peace, love, and music, in spite of all odds. One person to charge out onto the battlefields of the world with his guitar, shouting "Ore no uta o kike!" Hear my song! And put an end to your senseless conflicts. This man will be the leader, and the rest may at first question his methods or his senses but ultimately they'll all be singing his song.
Though when someone's beating me in Mario Kart, and stops at the finish line, waits 'til I get there, and then turns around and crosses it driving backwards, that sends a pretty clear message.
Creating free software is a gift, of sorts. You are providing the fruits of your time and effort for no charge and with few strings attached. Hence, you're "giving it away". And distribution is just another form of use. If I use a piece of software to create another piece of software, or build on it to create a larger "meta-package" - that falls under "distribution" but from my perspective it's just use. Can I use that software to accomplish what I want to accomplish, or not? I am not confused, though my word choice may sometimes be flawed.
My point about the goals being incompatible was simply that they are in partial opposition to each other. Restrictions on the use of a gift limit a gift's usefulness - that is a fact, though the importance of the fact depends a lot on the circumstances. But at some point the granularity of control you assert has to end - and even if a further degree of granularity in the control doesn't significantly impact the actual rights imparted to users of the code, the added complexity in the definition of those rights makes it more complicated to determine whether the software is usable, and more likely that some clause will create an incompatibility with the license, whether that was the intent of the license or not. What happens, for instance, if a GPL-like license asserts that, not only do derivative works need to be likewise-licensed, but also published in a manner and timetable defined by the software authors? (To prevent things like the KHTML/Safari issue, where Apple published their changes to KHTML but didn't do much to do it in a way that the KDE people could actually use...) - then it becomes much harder to use that licensed code, because the group granting the license could change at whim what defines compliance. GPLv3 isn't doing anything like that as far as I know, but it's asserting its protections more aggressively in other areas. I was making a rather abstract point - that attempting to completely protect GPL-style ideals with a rigorously worded license limits the usability of the licensed code, possibly more than the protection is worth. A license has to exist as a compromise between the goals of usability and protection, and it's always going to be an imperfect compromise. I call it an "abstract point" because it's not something I'd relate specifically to one of the new protections of GPLv3 - it's something I'd apply to the overall direction GPLv3 has moved, and what I think that change could imply if taken too far.
As I said, I believe that these issues are going to be resolved, one way or another - and a lot of it may simply be a matter of time, for people to get used to the new GPL.
What I mean is that the goals of giving away software and maintaining control over it are, at some level, not entirely compatible. Restrictions in the GPL do have the potential to prevent people from taking advantage of your software - some liberties are denied in order to protect others - I have accepted that trade-off in general, for roughly the reasons they were added to the license in the first place - but as more restrictions are being added to the license I must come to terms with them - and ultimately embrace them or not.
:) I think it's more interesting that way.
Extreme (degenerate) cases of this trade-off, of course, would be that you give your software freely but don't actually let anyone do anything with it - or you let people do whatever they want, in which case the protections we enjoy in licenses like GPL don't work. GPL has to live in between the extremes, as do all licenses (even BSD license has some restrictions) - it's technically correct, but maybe misleading, to say GPL is getting closer to one of the extremes - GPLv3 is more restrictive than GPLv2, but relative to the infinite potential for becoming more restrictive, it hasn't moved far at all. But nonetheless some, myself included, wonder from time to time whether the GPLv3 is too restrictive. The potential danger of a license that's too restrictive is that people simply won't use it - that they'll stick with GPLv2 (and possibly face legal loopholes of that document being exploited), or they'll choose another license (which may be even more vulnerable), etc. I want GPL to exist as a strong license and one that people will actually use - so that the collection of software that benefits from its protection will continue to grow. I do believe that's how it will be in the end, but the process of getting to that point - where people will generally feel as comfortable with the GPLv3 as they were with GPLv2 - it may just be a matter of time, or it may take more change to the GPL.
It's not as though I'm laying down the law here - saying that gifts must be given freely - I'm just talking about my perspective, and how I feel about the license, and the general question of what it really means to give something away while retaining control over it. It's not my goal to cast FUD, it's just that to me this isn't an entirely simple matter. I'd rather talk about my current perspective than keep my mouth shut.