so you wouldn't mind having your inbox filled with v1agr4 and penis enlargement ads if they didn't crash mail servers?
if someone crashes a mail server with a botnet that's a DDOS attack, but that's not why spam is problematic, and that's hardly an accurate description of what constitutes spam. most spammers aren't trying to crash e-mail servers--why would they? their spam messages wouldn't get through.
well, also spam usually lacks proper return addresses and is a general nuisance to e-mail servers.
i wholeheartedly agree with you that it's worst than junk mail. i mean, it's a lot easier for me to sort out junk mail from legitimate mail, partly because of their deceptive appearance as you said, but also because e-mail is cheap to send, and the internet is international. so instead of just receiving the junk mail from my local area--5 or 6 pieces a day, i'm receiving spam from all over the world--hundreds a day. so the volume is much larger.
but the problem is that judges and legislators don't see the difference between spam and junk mail. they see it as a legitimate form of commercial advertising. in reality, spam not only fills up our mailboxes, but it also pollutes search engine results and it generally makes the web/internet less useful for the public.
i think this just goes to demonstrate the huge disconnect between the people who run our government, and the information culture we live in. they have no grasp of why spam is such a big problem. and as long as it's used to promote business and fuel the economy, pro-business legislators have no problem with the headaches it causes people.
so as long as they only send a couple thousand at a time it's alright?
i know it may sound like there's a really easy solution to this problem (well, there is, but i don't think communism would work in our current culture), but there's a lot more complexity to this issue than simply banning the sending of X number of "unsolicited" e-mails.
at the record label where i used to work, we occasionally sent out mass e-mails to various mailing lists which we managed. we run an opt-in newsletter for fans who can submit their e-mail address via a form on our homepage. we didn't actively seek out e-mail addresses or purchase e-mail lists from anyone. all newsletter subscriptions were volunteered by visitors to our site. the last time i checked, that list contained well over 10,000 e-mail addresses. and because of the size of our mailing list, we ran into problems with our web host, though we solved the problem with the web hosting support rep by sending out the e-mails in blocks of ~100 e-mails at 2-3 minute intervals.
while i can think of no reason why someone would do this, i still have to acknowledge the possibility that some of the e-mail addresses on our list could have been added by someone other than the actual owner of the e-mail address. we eventually changed the subscription system to require an e-mail confirmation to eliminate such problems, but there were still thousands of e-mail addresses dating back 5-6 years which we could not verify. in theory, anyone who doesn't want to subscribe to our newsletters can unsubscribe via the website or with a simple e-mail with "unsubscribe" in the subject line, but that still doesn't eliminate the possibility that some people still might consider our newsletters 'unsolicited'--someone may have subscribed to our newsletter originally, but then changed their mind and never bothered to unsubscribe.
beyond that, we also manage a radio list and a publicity list which we occasionally sent stuff to via e-mail or by conventional mail (things like promo CDs, press kits, touring info, etc.). these contacts are generally acquired through business contacts, other people's websites, etc. now, we assume that these people may be interested in the info we send them (and most are), but they can still be considered unsolicited e-mails nonetheless.
if you want to outlaw spam, i think you would need a clearer definition of what comprises a spam e-mail, and one which doesn't hinder legitimate business operations. unsolicited is too broad of a term, as it's just anything you don't want and didn't directly ask for. but that potentially covers the majority of legitimate e-mails as well.
unsolicited can be anything that you did not solicit someone to send. i agree with you on the quantity definition. but anyone who sends you an e-mail without prior consent from you has sent you unsolicited e-mail. if all such e-mails were banned, then if someone simply contacts you even for non-commercial purposes, and you happen not to like that person, then you could accuse him of sending you "spam".
have you never contacted or been contacted by strangers over e-mail before aside from spam? i've gotten unsolicited e-mail job invitations because someone came across some work i did in a public contest. i've also been contacted by people who got my e-mail address from my online portfolio and wanted to hire me for a project. similarly, i've gotten casual e-mails from people who obtained my e-mail address one way or another. so how do these people know beforehand whether or not i'm going to consider their e-mails unsolicited, since technically all of them are?
personally, i think spam should be outlawed, but i think you'll have a hard time arguing that spam is any more damaging to your property than other types of unsolicited e-mails. how would you show that spam 'abuses your property'? what property is it abusing?
it seems to me that the most obvious way of to outlaw spam is to treat it the same way as auto-dialers, which are a public nuisance. though the defense may argue that e-mails do not cause a direct disruption the same way a phone call does, as it's more akin to junk mail.
but either way it's a public nuisance and businesses who employ such marketing/advertising practices should be punished. it's easier to go after businesses who hire spammers than the spammers themselves. and if there's no one left willing to hire spammers then the problem will go away on its own.
perhaps you should look up the word "crook" in the dictionary before making an ass of yourself.
i brought up alcohol because people who claim all drug users are crooks also seem to share the delusion that alcohol somehow isn't a drug because it's a socially condoned substance. so if you agree with the OP's statement, then you must also agree that 90% of all law-abiding citizens are also dishonest swindlers, a.k.a crooks.
no, i just go by scientific data rather than drug myths/hearsay/urban legends.
while, as another poster pointed out, there are some high-potency sativa strains which i neglected to consider, the cannabinoid ratios of indica vs. sativa are well-documented, wheras there is so scientific basis for your claims of "Indicas tend to put you to sleep. Sativas wake up your brain."
people who rely entirely on anecdotal evidence and subjective statements are generally the type who are easily deluded by the placebo effect and misinterpret psychosomatic symptoms for factual reality. instead of going along with what all your friends say, it it would be wise to actually perform some research on the documented pharmacological effects and other research data regarding the drugs you consume.
of course, you sound like the type of person who probably also believes that methadone poisons your bones, LSD crystals form in your spinal cord, and that coke from the 80's (or "good coke") produces no peripheral stimulation or causes come downs as other stimulants do.
it may be illegal to own certain drugs, but that doesn't make drug users "crooks" or bad people.
heck, 90% of the population uses drugs recreationally/socially. and stop deluding yourself if you think that alcohol is not a drug. alcohol causes more harm to society in terms of social problems and drunk driving accidents than most illicit drugs ever did.
real stoners don't call weed 'Sativa', as Cannabis Sativa has a low ratio of THC to CBD and also lower levels of cannabinoids in general, thus they are generally only used for manufacturing hemp, not for recreational ingestion. brick weed is generally of these strains because Sativa is much hardy as a plant, and also produces higher yields.
pot smokers will, however, sometimes refer to weed as "Indo," as in Cannabis _Indica_, because it is the more potent subspecies and the one primarily cultivated as a drug source. strains referred to as Chronic are generally only bred from Indica strains, though they are sometimes cross-bred with Sativa, sacrificing potency for volume.
the attitude displayed here is one of shortsighted greed, plain and simple. they want to attract customers & increase sales, but once they've got your money they don't give a damn about you anymore. that is the attitude Microsoft is expressing. i don't know what that has to do with pothead stereotypes.
uh... you might want to read over that snopes article yourself.
she may have failed in her efforts to have books removed, but she did initiate discussions with the city librarian about removing "objectionable" books.
so i don't think the GP's statement is inaccurate.
different people will give different answers for the question "how old is the earth" but that doesn't mean the matter is entirely subjective.
this particular issue may be controversial, but the argument for one side is much stronger than for the other. and on legal matters the court's interpretation of the law should be that which protects public interest and best serves public good.
how is it illegal to take something you purchased, and rightfully own, and convert it to a format that better suits your purposes. if i want to rip all my DVDs and CDs onto my hard drive, that is my prerogative. as long as i'm not distributing them illegally, it falls completely within fair use.
just like, if i have a child who is blind, and i want to take all the books i've bought her and record myself reading them aloud so that she may listen to the books when i'm not around, that is not a crime--not yet, at least.
that sorta defeats the purpose of having a shared online storage network. if everyone wanted to have total control over the space they donate, then instead of having one large public pool of online storage to be shared by everyone, you'd just have a bunch of small fragmented storage spaces or a bunch of disconnected groups of 5-6 people sharing a few gigabytes of storage. if that's the case then you might as well just call up a few of your friends and ask each other to hold onto your files for you.
the point of Wuala is so that they let you store whatever you want on the space they donate, and you let others do the same. it seems like a fair trade to me. obviously, if you don't want to share your disk space with strangers, then this service isn't for you. just build a RAID array.
obviously the public has plenty of motivation to maximize efficiency and public good. of course, this is predicated on there being a democratic government through which the public can exercise its will and protect/pursue its interests.
all arguments against such government-run public infrastructures typically regard bureaucratic issues which similarly plague any large commercial organization. but a private commercial organization answers to no-one but shareholders. whereas at least a government can be made to answer to its people.
The reality is more along the lines of people will buy it, but not in the numbers high enough to support the obscene salaries of the marketing team.
you really hit the nail on the head with that one. we live in a culture of advertising and mass marketing. in advertising there's a popular phrase called 'cutting through the clutter'. every advertising/marketing agency talks about needing to break through the clutter, or how this new ad campaign will rise above the clutter. everyone wants to generate noise for their product, and everyone wants to capture the market, so all companies hire marketing gurus and advertising agencies to bombard consumers with ads that will imprint their product in the public consciousness. but there's so much being sold that unless you scream louder than everyone else, you're not going to be heard. and that just produces a vicious cycle of ever-increasing marketing budgets and ever-louder ad campaigns.
but if someone is a 'hardcore gamer' in the sense that you've just described, then they're not likely to pay attention to the marketing hype of the latest big-budget titles because they already know what they're looking for. someone looking for Linux games has already narrowed down their search parameters to a specific niche devoid of the marketing clutter plaguing the mainstream market. instead of being assaulted with ads telling them what to buy, they're presented with genuine consumer choice rather than being manipulated by marketing.
just do a google search for the phrase "linux games" compared to "pc games" and look at the sponsored links accompanying each set of results. there's only ONE text ad in the "linux games" results rather than 8 in the "pc games" search--and that's only because 8 is the maximum number of sponsored links google prints on each page, so it's actually a lot more than 8 ads since each search gives you a different list of ads for the "pc games" search.
then there's the cost of operating any large corporation: CEO, VP, management, sales, accounting, customer relations, PR, etc. all of these are resource drains which contribute little to nothing towards producing an innovative, high quality video game.
that's the cost of having an unregulated corporate monopoly. and that wasn't a national telecom network. the Bell Telephone Company was an entirely privately-owned commercial enterprise which the government had no hand in running, and hence the public had no control over.
communications networks are natural monopolies. that's the most efficient way to run communications infrastructure. that's why it should have been nationalized instead of simply broken up into separate companies and remaining in the private sector--which are now re-consolidating whilst the industry continues to be de-regulated.
we can keep letting the pendulum swing back and forth between a regulated & fragmented and unregulated & consolidated corporate monopoly (depending on whether the republicans are in office), or we can nationalize our communications infrastructure once and for all and treat it as a true public resource/utility. then, instead of running our communications networks based on maximizing shareholder profits, we could run them based on maximizing efficiency and public good.
what if it was modeled after academic/research institutions like Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, Los Alamos National Laboratories/DOE, CERN, etc.?
the belief that commercial competition is the only driving force for innovation is a myth. ARPANET was not born of commercial competition. ask Tim Berners-Lee if his vision of the World Wide Web was spurred by competition.
in any case, these are cultural problems. perhaps we _are_ becoming a world full of 'Thomas Edison's rather than 'Nikola Tesla's. if you build a society in which money & wealth are what makes the world turn, then that is what people will aspire towards. likewise, if you build a communications infrastructure which is operated by commercial corporations, run by businessmen & CEOs with MBAs rather than PhDs, then of course all technological progress will rest on the actions and decisions of people driven purely by financial motivations.
however, if you establish a communications infrastructure which operates like an academic/research institution, as is done with most cutting edge research/technology (ex. the LHC), then it'll be intellectually-driven individuals who rise to positions of power and push the technology forward.
do you know who published their game? i know that PA has gotten pretty big over the years, so i'm guessing they can afford to go through a big publisher, but perhaps they're still small enough for the Mac & Linux markets to be worth grabbing. after all, they're still a newcomer in game development.
I haven't actually played the game myself yet (perhaps they will release a PSP port on the PSN?) but they seem like the ideal type of company to produce games for Linux.
first off, despite their popularity, they definitely depart from the mainstream in terms of gaming philosophy. Gabe and Tycho, or Jerry and Mike, are not the type to pander to mainstream tastes or follow popular gaming trends such as creating derivative FPS titles that simply bank on cutting edge graphics & eye candy.
i'm guessing the title probably isn't too revolutionary in terms of gameplay either, but rather the rich comedic dialog and inventive storyline will be the main selling points of any title they produce. this in itself is pretty exceptional as it's a game developed by non-game-developers.
and i'm sure the series will develop the same cult-following as their webcomic has. and this should be the aim of all Linux game developers; rather than try to compete with the mainstream to develop a better Half-Life 2 or Halo, aim to create a cult classic aimed at fringe demographics that the major studios have neglected all these years.
there's already too many games made for the lowest common denominator, so create something that caters to more refined & less conventional tastes. it may be less accessible to the mainstream, and thus have little mass appeal, but you're not going to beat Activision or Midway at their own game anyway (no pun intended). the big studios can't risk experimenting with innovative/original games when they're sinking millions of dollars into each title they publish, so they have to stick with tried and true formulas. therefore it's up to smaller developers to create original titles.
when the use of seatbelts is brought up in a discussion about running red lights.
saying that someone who doesn't use a firewall when connecting to the internet deserves what they get contributes nothing useful to this discussion, unless you're implying that this vulnerability is moot because we should all be using firewalls.
well, selling software is different from selling cars or physical commodities which have significant per-unit manufacturing costs. in software your production cost is offset by volume. the per unit cost should be minimal if you're selling 10-15 million copies, even if the game took 1-2 million dollars to develop.
besides, runaway indie best-sellers are extremely rare. it's unlikely that most indie games will be able to compete with mainstream hits. that's why the linux gaming market is ideal for smaller developers. you trade the smaller market for less competition (and almost none from the big studios), which also means you don't have to spend as much money on marketing/advertising.
and while i don't know how much it cost to make doom, that was a completely different market and gaming industry back then. i'm sure the cost of producing doom was about average for mainstream titles back then. the entry cost to the video game market today is too much for most independent developers to afford, which is why they should seek out niche markets.
a firewall will protect your computer from many exploit attacks, but that's not a reason to rely solely on a firewall for protection.
running a system with a bunch of unpatched security vulnerabilities and simply relying on a firewall to protect you is just as foolish as connecting to the internet without a firewall. after all, what happens if the firewall fails, is bypassed, or has a security vulnerability of its own?
if we'd just established a national telecom network rather than give subsidies to the telecoms so that we can pay for the infrastructure they ream us for using, then this wouldn't be happening.
IT/communications infrastructure is just as important as roads and sewers these days. and there are much more efficient ways of managing our national communications network than the mess of private networks we have right now--which does not give us the benefits of consumer choice, yet still lacks any kind of centralized planning which a natural monopoly ought to have.
if all communications infrastructure could be nationalized, the first thing to do would be to:
convert/integrate cellular networks into municipal wi-fi
convert all TV/radio broadcast ranges into wi-fi/wi-max bands
establish a single unified, and open, cellular communication network that resides on top of the national wi-fi network
compare the progress & development made on the internet/web as an open public communication network with that of our nation's cellular networks. very little innovation or technological progress has been made in cellular technology because these proprietary networks are closed to outside developers. only a small number of handset makers are given permission to build devices for use on these private networks, and the telecoms' tight grip of these networks preclude the possibility of adopting new features.
and since the internet can handle the transmission of digital video, audio & text just fine, there's no point in having redundant communications networks that are dedicated to TV/radio/telecommunication--especially in the case of long distance calls and text messages where telecoms charge extortionate prices for something which costs close to nothing to accomplish through the public internet.
and if cellular networks were converted into municipal wi-fi coverage, not only would it provide ubiquitous wi-fi internet access for everyone, but we'd stop having to pay extortionate rates for cellular data plans. we would be converting a highly specialized network of limited usefulness to a much more generally useful network that can accomplish all of the same things and more.
this could be a blessing in disguise. the lack of mainstream titles by the big studios means that there is an untapped niche market for smaller studios or independent developers.
you won't see indie games with the most realistic 3d engine, but huge resources aren't necessarily a prerequisite for quality gameplay. besides, innovation is generally born from the margins of society rather than the mainstream.
it may not be as profitable a market as other platforms, but surely there are enough potential linux gamers out there for it to be worth the attention of independent game developers. and with the ease of distributing the games yourself over the web, you can bypass publishers and retain all of your profits.
Slashdot Mirror
so you wouldn't mind having your inbox filled with v1agr4 and penis enlargement ads if they didn't crash mail servers?
if someone crashes a mail server with a botnet that's a DDOS attack, but that's not why spam is problematic, and that's hardly an accurate description of what constitutes spam. most spammers aren't trying to crash e-mail servers--why would they? their spam messages wouldn't get through.
well, also spam usually lacks proper return addresses and is a general nuisance to e-mail servers.
i wholeheartedly agree with you that it's worst than junk mail. i mean, it's a lot easier for me to sort out junk mail from legitimate mail, partly because of their deceptive appearance as you said, but also because e-mail is cheap to send, and the internet is international. so instead of just receiving the junk mail from my local area--5 or 6 pieces a day, i'm receiving spam from all over the world--hundreds a day. so the volume is much larger.
but the problem is that judges and legislators don't see the difference between spam and junk mail. they see it as a legitimate form of commercial advertising. in reality, spam not only fills up our mailboxes, but it also pollutes search engine results and it generally makes the web/internet less useful for the public.
i think this just goes to demonstrate the huge disconnect between the people who run our government, and the information culture we live in. they have no grasp of why spam is such a big problem. and as long as it's used to promote business and fuel the economy, pro-business legislators have no problem with the headaches it causes people.
so as long as they only send a couple thousand at a time it's alright?
i know it may sound like there's a really easy solution to this problem (well, there is, but i don't think communism would work in our current culture), but there's a lot more complexity to this issue than simply banning the sending of X number of "unsolicited" e-mails.
at the record label where i used to work, we occasionally sent out mass e-mails to various mailing lists which we managed. we run an opt-in newsletter for fans who can submit their e-mail address via a form on our homepage. we didn't actively seek out e-mail addresses or purchase e-mail lists from anyone. all newsletter subscriptions were volunteered by visitors to our site. the last time i checked, that list contained well over 10,000 e-mail addresses. and because of the size of our mailing list, we ran into problems with our web host, though we solved the problem with the web hosting support rep by sending out the e-mails in blocks of ~100 e-mails at 2-3 minute intervals.
while i can think of no reason why someone would do this, i still have to acknowledge the possibility that some of the e-mail addresses on our list could have been added by someone other than the actual owner of the e-mail address. we eventually changed the subscription system to require an e-mail confirmation to eliminate such problems, but there were still thousands of e-mail addresses dating back 5-6 years which we could not verify. in theory, anyone who doesn't want to subscribe to our newsletters can unsubscribe via the website or with a simple e-mail with "unsubscribe" in the subject line, but that still doesn't eliminate the possibility that some people still might consider our newsletters 'unsolicited'--someone may have subscribed to our newsletter originally, but then changed their mind and never bothered to unsubscribe.
beyond that, we also manage a radio list and a publicity list which we occasionally sent stuff to via e-mail or by conventional mail (things like promo CDs, press kits, touring info, etc.). these contacts are generally acquired through business contacts, other people's websites, etc. now, we assume that these people may be interested in the info we send them (and most are), but they can still be considered unsolicited e-mails nonetheless.
if you want to outlaw spam, i think you would need a clearer definition of what comprises a spam e-mail, and one which doesn't hinder legitimate business operations. unsolicited is too broad of a term, as it's just anything you don't want and didn't directly ask for. but that potentially covers the majority of legitimate e-mails as well.
unsolicited can be anything that you did not solicit someone to send. i agree with you on the quantity definition. but anyone who sends you an e-mail without prior consent from you has sent you unsolicited e-mail. if all such e-mails were banned, then if someone simply contacts you even for non-commercial purposes, and you happen not to like that person, then you could accuse him of sending you "spam".
have you never contacted or been contacted by strangers over e-mail before aside from spam? i've gotten unsolicited e-mail job invitations because someone came across some work i did in a public contest. i've also been contacted by people who got my e-mail address from my online portfolio and wanted to hire me for a project. similarly, i've gotten casual e-mails from people who obtained my e-mail address one way or another. so how do these people know beforehand whether or not i'm going to consider their e-mails unsolicited, since technically all of them are?
personally, i think spam should be outlawed, but i think you'll have a hard time arguing that spam is any more damaging to your property than other types of unsolicited e-mails. how would you show that spam 'abuses your property'? what property is it abusing?
it seems to me that the most obvious way of to outlaw spam is to treat it the same way as auto-dialers, which are a public nuisance. though the defense may argue that e-mails do not cause a direct disruption the same way a phone call does, as it's more akin to junk mail.
but either way it's a public nuisance and businesses who employ such marketing/advertising practices should be punished. it's easier to go after businesses who hire spammers than the spammers themselves. and if there's no one left willing to hire spammers then the problem will go away on its own.
i thought it was 'intrapersonal communication'.
perhaps you should look up the word "crook" in the dictionary before making an ass of yourself.
i brought up alcohol because people who claim all drug users are crooks also seem to share the delusion that alcohol somehow isn't a drug because it's a socially condoned substance. so if you agree with the OP's statement, then you must also agree that 90% of all law-abiding citizens are also dishonest swindlers, a.k.a crooks.
no, i just go by scientific data rather than drug myths/hearsay/urban legends.
while, as another poster pointed out, there are some high-potency sativa strains which i neglected to consider, the cannabinoid ratios of indica vs. sativa are well-documented, wheras there is so scientific basis for your claims of "Indicas tend to put you to sleep. Sativas wake up your brain."
people who rely entirely on anecdotal evidence and subjective statements are generally the type who are easily deluded by the placebo effect and misinterpret psychosomatic symptoms for factual reality. instead of going along with what all your friends say, it it would be wise to actually perform some research on the documented pharmacological effects and other research data regarding the drugs you consume.
of course, you sound like the type of person who probably also believes that methadone poisons your bones, LSD crystals form in your spinal cord, and that coke from the 80's (or "good coke") produces no peripheral stimulation or causes come downs as other stimulants do.
possessing drugs makes you a crook now?
it may be illegal to own certain drugs, but that doesn't make drug users "crooks" or bad people.
heck, 90% of the population uses drugs recreationally/socially. and stop deluding yourself if you think that alcohol is not a drug. alcohol causes more harm to society in terms of social problems and drunk driving accidents than most illicit drugs ever did.
ok, several things:
where exactly does he refer to a list of anything? here is what the OP wrote:
he referred to her attempt at banning books--which she did.
how cute that you still haven't read that snopes article you linked to.
uh... you might want to read over that snopes article yourself.
she may have failed in her efforts to have books removed, but she did initiate discussions with the city librarian about removing "objectionable" books.
so i don't think the GP's statement is inaccurate.
different people will give different answers for the question "how old is the earth" but that doesn't mean the matter is entirely subjective.
this particular issue may be controversial, but the argument for one side is much stronger than for the other. and on legal matters the court's interpretation of the law should be that which protects public interest and best serves public good.
how is it illegal to take something you purchased, and rightfully own, and convert it to a format that better suits your purposes. if i want to rip all my DVDs and CDs onto my hard drive, that is my prerogative. as long as i'm not distributing them illegally, it falls completely within fair use.
just like, if i have a child who is blind, and i want to take all the books i've bought her and record myself reading them aloud so that she may listen to the books when i'm not around, that is not a crime--not yet, at least.
that sorta defeats the purpose of having a shared online storage network. if everyone wanted to have total control over the space they donate, then instead of having one large public pool of online storage to be shared by everyone, you'd just have a bunch of small fragmented storage spaces or a bunch of disconnected groups of 5-6 people sharing a few gigabytes of storage. if that's the case then you might as well just call up a few of your friends and ask each other to hold onto your files for you.
the point of Wuala is so that they let you store whatever you want on the space they donate, and you let others do the same. it seems like a fair trade to me. obviously, if you don't want to share your disk space with strangers, then this service isn't for you. just build a RAID array.
obviously the public has plenty of motivation to maximize efficiency and public good. of course, this is predicated on there being a democratic government through which the public can exercise its will and protect/pursue its interests.
all arguments against such government-run public infrastructures typically regard bureaucratic issues which similarly plague any large commercial organization. but a private commercial organization answers to no-one but shareholders. whereas at least a government can be made to answer to its people.
you really hit the nail on the head with that one. we live in a culture of advertising and mass marketing. in advertising there's a popular phrase called 'cutting through the clutter'. every advertising/marketing agency talks about needing to break through the clutter, or how this new ad campaign will rise above the clutter. everyone wants to generate noise for their product, and everyone wants to capture the market, so all companies hire marketing gurus and advertising agencies to bombard consumers with ads that will imprint their product in the public consciousness. but there's so much being sold that unless you scream louder than everyone else, you're not going to be heard. and that just produces a vicious cycle of ever-increasing marketing budgets and ever-louder ad campaigns.
but if someone is a 'hardcore gamer' in the sense that you've just described, then they're not likely to pay attention to the marketing hype of the latest big-budget titles because they already know what they're looking for. someone looking for Linux games has already narrowed down their search parameters to a specific niche devoid of the marketing clutter plaguing the mainstream market. instead of being assaulted with ads telling them what to buy, they're presented with genuine consumer choice rather than being manipulated by marketing.
just do a google search for the phrase "linux games" compared to "pc games" and look at the sponsored links accompanying each set of results. there's only ONE text ad in the "linux games" results rather than 8 in the "pc games" search--and that's only because 8 is the maximum number of sponsored links google prints on each page, so it's actually a lot more than 8 ads since each search gives you a different list of ads for the "pc games" search.
then there's the cost of operating any large corporation: CEO, VP, management, sales, accounting, customer relations, PR, etc. all of these are resource drains which contribute little to nothing towards producing an innovative, high quality video game.
that's the cost of having an unregulated corporate monopoly. and that wasn't a national telecom network. the Bell Telephone Company was an entirely privately-owned commercial enterprise which the government had no hand in running, and hence the public had no control over.
communications networks are natural monopolies. that's the most efficient way to run communications infrastructure. that's why it should have been nationalized instead of simply broken up into separate companies and remaining in the private sector--which are now re-consolidating whilst the industry continues to be de-regulated.
we can keep letting the pendulum swing back and forth between a regulated & fragmented and unregulated & consolidated corporate monopoly (depending on whether the republicans are in office), or we can nationalize our communications infrastructure once and for all and treat it as a true public resource/utility. then, instead of running our communications networks based on maximizing shareholder profits, we could run them based on maximizing efficiency and public good.
what if it was modeled after academic/research institutions like Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, Los Alamos National Laboratories/DOE, CERN, etc.?
the belief that commercial competition is the only driving force for innovation is a myth. ARPANET was not born of commercial competition. ask Tim Berners-Lee if his vision of the World Wide Web was spurred by competition.
in any case, these are cultural problems. perhaps we _are_ becoming a world full of 'Thomas Edison's rather than 'Nikola Tesla's. if you build a society in which money & wealth are what makes the world turn, then that is what people will aspire towards. likewise, if you build a communications infrastructure which is operated by commercial corporations, run by businessmen & CEOs with MBAs rather than PhDs, then of course all technological progress will rest on the actions and decisions of people driven purely by financial motivations.
however, if you establish a communications infrastructure which operates like an academic/research institution, as is done with most cutting edge research/technology (ex. the LHC), then it'll be intellectually-driven individuals who rise to positions of power and push the technology forward.
those stats would be interesting to see.
do you know who published their game? i know that PA has gotten pretty big over the years, so i'm guessing they can afford to go through a big publisher, but perhaps they're still small enough for the Mac & Linux markets to be worth grabbing. after all, they're still a newcomer in game development.
I haven't actually played the game myself yet (perhaps they will release a PSP port on the PSN?) but they seem like the ideal type of company to produce games for Linux.
first off, despite their popularity, they definitely depart from the mainstream in terms of gaming philosophy. Gabe and Tycho, or Jerry and Mike, are not the type to pander to mainstream tastes or follow popular gaming trends such as creating derivative FPS titles that simply bank on cutting edge graphics & eye candy.
i'm guessing the title probably isn't too revolutionary in terms of gameplay either, but rather the rich comedic dialog and inventive storyline will be the main selling points of any title they produce. this in itself is pretty exceptional as it's a game developed by non-game-developers.
and i'm sure the series will develop the same cult-following as their webcomic has. and this should be the aim of all Linux game developers; rather than try to compete with the mainstream to develop a better Half-Life 2 or Halo, aim to create a cult classic aimed at fringe demographics that the major studios have neglected all these years.
there's already too many games made for the lowest common denominator, so create something that caters to more refined & less conventional tastes. it may be less accessible to the mainstream, and thus have little mass appeal, but you're not going to beat Activision or Midway at their own game anyway (no pun intended). the big studios can't risk experimenting with innovative/original games when they're sinking millions of dollars into each title they publish, so they have to stick with tried and true formulas. therefore it's up to smaller developers to create original titles.
when the use of seatbelts is brought up in a discussion about running red lights.
saying that someone who doesn't use a firewall when connecting to the internet deserves what they get contributes nothing useful to this discussion, unless you're implying that this vulnerability is moot because we should all be using firewalls.
well, selling software is different from selling cars or physical commodities which have significant per-unit manufacturing costs. in software your production cost is offset by volume. the per unit cost should be minimal if you're selling 10-15 million copies, even if the game took 1-2 million dollars to develop.
besides, runaway indie best-sellers are extremely rare. it's unlikely that most indie games will be able to compete with mainstream hits. that's why the linux gaming market is ideal for smaller developers. you trade the smaller market for less competition (and almost none from the big studios), which also means you don't have to spend as much money on marketing/advertising.
and while i don't know how much it cost to make doom, that was a completely different market and gaming industry back then. i'm sure the cost of producing doom was about average for mainstream titles back then. the entry cost to the video game market today is too much for most independent developers to afford, which is why they should seek out niche markets.
what do you get? internet herpes?
a firewall will protect your computer from many exploit attacks, but that's not a reason to rely solely on a firewall for protection.
running a system with a bunch of unpatched security vulnerabilities and simply relying on a firewall to protect you is just as foolish as connecting to the internet without a firewall. after all, what happens if the firewall fails, is bypassed, or has a security vulnerability of its own?
if we'd just established a national telecom network rather than give subsidies to the telecoms so that we can pay for the infrastructure they ream us for using, then this wouldn't be happening.
IT/communications infrastructure is just as important as roads and sewers these days. and there are much more efficient ways of managing our national communications network than the mess of private networks we have right now--which does not give us the benefits of consumer choice, yet still lacks any kind of centralized planning which a natural monopoly ought to have.
if all communications infrastructure could be nationalized, the first thing to do would be to:
compare the progress & development made on the internet/web as an open public communication network with that of our nation's cellular networks. very little innovation or technological progress has been made in cellular technology because these proprietary networks are closed to outside developers. only a small number of handset makers are given permission to build devices for use on these private networks, and the telecoms' tight grip of these networks preclude the possibility of adopting new features.
and since the internet can handle the transmission of digital video, audio & text just fine, there's no point in having redundant communications networks that are dedicated to TV/radio/telecommunication--especially in the case of long distance calls and text messages where telecoms charge extortionate prices for something which costs close to nothing to accomplish through the public internet.
and if cellular networks were converted into municipal wi-fi coverage, not only would it provide ubiquitous wi-fi internet access for everyone, but we'd stop having to pay extortionate rates for cellular data plans. we would be converting a highly specialized network of limited usefulness to a much more generally useful network that can accomplish all of the same things and more.
this could be a blessing in disguise. the lack of mainstream titles by the big studios means that there is an untapped niche market for smaller studios or independent developers.
you won't see indie games with the most realistic 3d engine, but huge resources aren't necessarily a prerequisite for quality gameplay. besides, innovation is generally born from the margins of society rather than the mainstream.
it may not be as profitable a market as other platforms, but surely there are enough potential linux gamers out there for it to be worth the attention of independent game developers. and with the ease of distributing the games yourself over the web, you can bypass publishers and retain all of your profits.