> I have not just a moral right to, but > what should be a legal right to as well
You *have* that legal right. You are allowed to reverse engineer your software to see how it works. You are allowed to patch your software to make it work however you like. You are even allowed to distribute your patches and instructions on how to install them.
You're just not allowed to sell or give away *copies* of the software, modified or unmodified. And strangely enough, that condition is acceptable in an open source license according to OSI's standards, so I don't really see a problem.
Except, of course, that most people don't want to learn assembly language and reverse engineer their software. Most people also don't want to learn C++ and debug their software, though, so it's something of a moot point.
Basically, the only thing open source REALLY gives you that you don't get with commercial products is the right to sell someone else's hard work without giving them any of the money.
So please, explain to me why that's such a great thing. Imagine that I've written some software. Why do *you* deserve to sell it for profit?
IMO, this sample is actually skewed toward Perl, because Perl is very popular in the open source community. In the larger community of all software developers, including commercial proprietary packages and internal development projects, I believe you'll find that Perl is significantly less common than these figures represent. Not many people are writing Perl commercially, but a lot of people (like me) are writing PHP commercially. There are also a lot fewer schoolchildren learning Perl than there are learning PHP.
Same for Java. On Sourceforge, Java and C++ run just about neck and neck:
C++ (16060 projects)
Java (15800 projects)
However, when I say C++, I'm really talking about C/C++ because all C is valid C++. So let's include C as well:
C (15360 projects)
Looks like about the same ratio. C and C++ represent about twice as many projects as Java. And again, Java is more popular in open source circles than it is in commercial and internal development, so the sample is probably skewed toward Java.
Of course, there may also be legions of Perl and Java programmers that have blacklisted SourceForge from the community because they disagreed with it.
I see nothing wrong with Jonathan making an honest effort to create a good standard, even if he is going it alone at the moment.
Of course, his PHP mail() configuration is hosed. Yeah, I take it seriously when a guy writing RSS standards can't configure his server. Sure. Whatever. But it can happen to anyone, so I won't pass judgement on that alone.
I read the standard, went to the forum, and pointed out some valid concerns about one of its sections.
The response to those concerns will tell me just how seriously to take this RSS 3 thing. If Jonathan has any business writing a standard, he'll have some cogent thoughts about these concerns, and I'll be perfectly willing to join the community. If not... meh. RSS isn't exactly at the top of my "cool" list anyway.
So... lots of people need Perl programmers, and not many people need PHP programmers. Wouldn't that naturally imply that the people who want PHP programmers already have them? Doesn't a distinct *lack* of Perl programmers among those who want them present some evidence that they're thin on the ground?
Just look at the overall developer community. C++ and PHP groups get a boatload of traffic from an overwhelming number of participants. Java and Perl groups don't; they get a lot less traffic from a lot fewer people.
And the signal-to-noise ratio is OUTRAGEOUSLY higher.
If you're an experienced developer who wants to communicate with other experienced developers, you have to go where those developers are. In the massive communities around C++ and PHP, you can't get a good SNR because you're surrounded by all these idiots. There are smart people there, but the idiots are always in the way, so you can't find them. You have to go somewhere the idiots simply can't get over the bar, or at least find it a hostile enough environment that they leave rapidly.
So you have three choices: a difficult technology, an unpopular technology, or an intolerant community. These strip out the idiots and make it easier to find people worth your time and effort. And while difficult technlogies and intolerant communities might be seen as drawbacks, EVERY technology eventually becomes obsolete and thus unpopular. So after you've been in the industry long enough, *something* you like and know will end up unpopular enough that you can join a community focused around it and enjoy an idiot-free experience.
It's not the argument that bothered me, it's the threat. "You'd better agree with me in public, or I'll DESTROY you!"
I don't think so. I'm going to go over here where you can't do squat, which takes away the tiny little insignificant amount of support I give *you*. It won't destroy you, but I don't really want to play that game anyway. One of these days, Tom may need *my* help with something, and do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to help him. Because that's what this community is about, and a personal disagreement shouldn't affect that. The chance of Tom ever *specifically* needing my help is certainly slim to none, but it's the principle of the thing.
In any case, I'm one of the very few people who wrote all their CGI scripts in C for several years, because that's what worked best for me. Eventually, PHP and ASP showed up. I remember being very excited at the release of PHP/FI 2.0, but when I look at the feature list today, I can't remember why.
I stopped using Perl over ten years ago, when I had a disagreement with Tom Christiansen and he seriously threatened to blacklist me from the Perl community if I didn't agree with him. I told him to go ahead, because I would simply never write Perl again. He laughed and told me to let him know how that went.
Well, it went just fine. I haven't written a single line of Perl since that day, and I haven't missed it one bit.
These days, with so many options available, I think Perl appeals to a certain kind of developer in much the same way Java does. You don't really NEED it, in the sense that many other things can do the same job... but it's a point of style. Java and Perl now serve primarily as focal points for very small and specific communities that otherwise wouldn't really exist in a coherent fashion, much like APL or Objective-C. Ruby is similar, and I don't really see it going mainstream. These sorts of niche technologies still do the job, and selecting one of them instead of a more "mainstream" language like PHP or C++ identifies you as a particular kind of person.
This is not a DDOS. You're sending the spammer exactly as much mail as he sent out. Any sensible person who sends X number of ads should be prepared to receive X number of responses. Up till now, it's been essentially impossible for anyone to send a negative response; any response says either "yes I would like your product" or "yes this is a valid email address you can sell to other scumbags".
Now that they can receive responses that say "nobody saw or read your mail", they are getting pretty much what we get when they spam us: a pain in the ass with no redeeming value. Their natural desire is to stop it, which they can do by removing the relevant addresses from their lists, which is what we wanted in the first place.
This isn't an ideal option, but it's the first one I've seen without a discernible downside risk for non-spammers.
> Sending thousands of emails to the company > would be much more effective
And then, for only $250, I could get millions of annoying emails sent to some company I don't like. Such as my competitors, for example. I just have to pretend I'm advertising their services!
Blue Frog essentially responds to spam with complaints. So spammer X sends fifty thousand spam mail messages to Blue Frog users, and he gets fifty thousand complaints back. It's an eye-for-an-eye technique done properly: one spam, one complaint.
I see this as having two major effects. First, it keeps the spam away from you. Second, it informs the spammer that nobody read his spam. Spammers *depend* on human beings reading their spam. As long as nobody reads it, nobody buys.
To paraphrase, if you're looking for John's name in a document, you can pretty rapidly narrow your search to something that turns up John's name. But if you're looking for John's phone number, things are a little different. The average guy who doesn't grok regex searching is going to have a tough time with that.
So Microsoft proposes a mechanism that emphasises all the numeric data in a document, even if textual. Pretty good feature. Probably something that could be challenged on the grounds that it's just another "language" with syntax highlighting applied, which is an old, old, old technique.
> I am most interested in the object and > economic systems.
From your rules, you seem most interested in player *control* of the object and economic systems under a system that prevents unfairness. I don't think anyone can really argue that this is a *bad* thing.
But what exactly does this add to the *game*? It seems like a political concept more than a game concept. It smacks of "workers' control of the means of production" - not that I find it socialist at all, but it's the same basic class of idea. I'm interested in knowing how an open player-directed economy will be more likely to enhance the game than damage it.
A PKI solution to the object duping problem looks workable, although I haven't gone into the details too much yet.
The flaw there is that the casual gamer is never supposed to *get* to the high levels. The assumption is that casual gamers will play for a while, then quit. Meanwhile, the hardcore gamers get bored with frequent milestones, so they need to be moved farther apart.
I've always thought it would be more productive to have a game with multiple unrelated objectives. Do away with the single measure of power, and let people figure out on their own what they want to do. In theory, the casual gamer will then settle into something with frequent milestones, while the hardcore gamer tackles massive tasks that bear fruit once a month.
The only way to do this effectively is the way GTA and "The Sims" have done it: model interesting systems until interesting behavior naturally falls out of them. It's possible to amuse yourself for extended periods in GTA without completing more than one or two missions, and "The Sims" doesn't even *have* missions.
But nobody ever listens to me. Which is just fine, because if I ever have the funding and the time to build it, I'll have no competition.;)
True, but he knows that. (Most of these rules predate SW:G. I know mine do, and they're arranged roughly chronologically.)
These laws are an ideal in progress. Nobody implements them perfectly. Some of them are contradictory. Others present problems with multiple solutions, all of them bad.
One of Raph's biggest problems has always been that he needs approval from the management and cooperation from the design and development teams to make them happen. He's gotten more of that at SW:G than he did at UO, but he still doesn't have the 100% faith and trust he needs to make his idealised vision that follows as many rules as is practical.
Of course, I'm biased, as you'd know if you read far enough down the list to find Darklock's first and second laws.;)
> Frankly, you've improperly extended my > argument.
That's funny; I thought you had improperly extended mine.
> I was arguing that appropriate was not the > same as legally acceptable.
Whereas both are perfectly acceptable synonyms for "okay". So while you may prefer "legally acceptable", it is perfectly fine for me to prefer "appropriate", which does not make either one of us wrong.
> I was arguing to the larger point
I think you've rather MISSED the point.
Privacy is a social construct. It is something we have because we have *agreed* to extend it to one another. It isn't about definitions and laws and regulations, it's about understanding what other people want and respecting their wishes. You can't legislate that effectively, so the law is always an inappropriate measure of whether something is a breach of privacy.
In essence, you have violated my privacy when you pass my information to the wrong person, and only *I* decide whether a given person is wrong or right. The converse applies; if I tell your "real name" to someone I know, that might be a violation of privacy. I don't know. Only *you* know.
We can't make any real productive progress in defining and protecting privacy until we all recognise and understand that privacy is just another name for courtesy. We don't go telling people one another's personal information, because it would be *rude*. So if you want to protect privacy, you need to protect courtesy, which means getting a handle on this alarming rise in sheer rudeness in modern society.
> And am I non-racist if I thought a kike was > a derogatory name for a German?
That depends. Are Germans a race? If so, you're still racist... unless you're German, of course, in which case you have a healthy sense of humility and a disarming sense of self-aggrandizing humor.
> Actually, it is ok to tell fart jokes in > math class. Appropriate, maybe not.
So it depends on what your definition of "is" is?
> you have no reason to expect privacy in > that no one will retell your fart joke > elsewhere either
You're improperly extending the metaphor. The point is to illustrate that what is okay to say in one place may not be okay to say in another.
Perhaps a better example would be if your friend were to say "hey, tell that kike joke". When you're sitting around with a bunch of Catholics, that may be perfectly fine. When you're sitting around with a bunch of Jews, it's decidedly NOT fine, and much of the outrage will fall on YOU for knowing "that kike joke" in the first place.
It's a different public place. It's not okay to tell fart jokes in math class, but it's perfectly fine to tell them on the playground... even though in this case, IT'S THE SAME PEOPLE.
> there are a lot of folks that don't > -want- their OSS work to be > commercialized by anyone else
And yet, you can't stop anyone else from selling your code under the GPL. So the GPL doesn't work here, either. In fact, *no* open source license works. You would have to develop copyrighted freeware with source. And that wouldn't work, either; it already failed in the eighties.
If you don't want anyone but you to commercialise a project, you have to withhold it from the market until you decide to commercialise it. We call this "proprietary" software, and many people are already doing it.
> The BSD is a great license, but that is > actually a -weakness-, IMO - that anyone > can take BSD code, make a new product out > of it, and not have to release those > changes back to the community.
This is what we call "freedom". The GPL trades it for "security". (Somebody in the early history of the U.S. said something about that once.)
Here's the question. Let's say you write some code, and you share it. I see your code, and it gives me an idea; I want to write some more code. Who should decide what I can do with my code?
The GPL thinks *you* should decide. Once I've seen your code, my new code is implementing an idea that was a derivative work of your code, so you should be able to tell me what I can do with it. Unfortunately, I can't "unsee" your code or "unknow" my idea.
The BSD license thinks *I* should decide. After all, I wrote the code, so you can help yourself to a big healthy serving of STFU.
The really *big* difference in what the GPL means as opposed to what the BSD license means isn't really evident to the developer, it's evident to the reseller. Take two companies, A and B. A releases a project that took years to build. B grabs that project and makes a minor modification to it in a couple weeks. Now B has a project worth more than A's project. How can A respond?
Under the GPL, B must release their changes, and A can now sell the exact same project. The playing field is leveled. Nobody has an advantage.
Under the BSD license, B does not have to release their changes. A does not have what B has developed. B has obtained a commercial advantage. However, A does not have to release everything they do, either. They can now turn around and release their own changes, and perhaps gain a commercial advantage over B.
So which license is better? It depends on your development and marketing muscle. If you have more marketers than developers, the GPL is superior, because all you have to do is shout louder to get more users. If you have more developers than marketers, the BSD license is superior, because it allows you to differentiate your product in the marketplace.
> Someone's account was deleted because they > posted someone's home address without their > permission. Funny thing was, the guy's address > was readily available on his own web site.
I've posted my cell phone number in a public forum before. I posted it there because I wanted the people in that forum to have it for a specific purpose.
But if you were to find my cell phone number on that forum, and post it (without permission) in ANOTHER forum, that would be an invasion of privacy.
Essentially, I choose where I want to say things. And if I choose to say something over HERE, you don't have any natural right to repeat it over THERE except under certain very narrow guidelines. Some of those guidelines are legal, like the "fair use" provisions under copyright. Some of them are contractual, like the TOS on a web site. And some of them are social, like not posting people's unobfuscated email addresses.
We're not all on the same page about the social guidelines, but they're the most important aspect. Privacy is an agreement between people that we will not repeat certain information to others, because you would not like them to have it. When we don't have that agreement and understanding, privacy gets compromised. We need to understand and accept that certain people are not going to protect our privacy, and either stop talking to them or accept the breaches of privacy that come from it.
The CNet article had a dilemma. On the one hand, they needed to refrain from publishing information that violated privacy. On the other, they had to demonstrate that the information was something to worry about. So they had to cross that line, but just *slightly*, enough to illuminate the problem without being outrageous.
I think they made a pretty good choice, under the circumstances... but I think they should have made a slightly better one by choosing to "out" the address of someone at CNet (with permission!) instead of someone at Google.
And I still think Google is overreacting. It was a good hack. They should appreciate that.
Sony treats developers like crap. You have to jump through thirty thousand hoops to get any interest from them at all, and it takes forever.
Microsoft, on the other hand, knows that the really HUGE successes are just as likely to come from a high school student as from an industry luminary... so they aren't as quick to dismiss someone for lack of experience.
In the end, Sony will lose, because Microsoft is cementing relationships with gamers that will produce the NEXT big thing... while Sony is turning up their nose to keep hanging out with the people who made the last one.
Most people drive in pretty limited areas, so that terabyte of space could be used to cache data for your usual driving area. When you drive somewhere else, you probably ask the GPS to give you directions, and it can cache the suggested route. It's not that bad an idea. Note also that he says "photorealistic", so I'd imagine large stretches of highway and desert would probably be simulated until satellite imagery is available to update it (and determined to contain useful information).
> I'm also confused on his ideas on buying > a license for all music... and then > playing $.16 for each song... Don't those > ideas contradict themselves..?
Don't free radio, $1 song downloads, and $16 CDs contradict themselves? No. They're used in different ways. And I think it's ludicrous to suggest that EVERYONE will have a terabyte iPod; there will be people who do things different ways, and the market will support them.
Furthermore, if I read the article right, there is a website offering 16 cent songs *now*... which is only peripherally related to how music will be licensed for the terabyte iPod. It's an indication that the "per song" model is already being challenged and tested.
> I'm sure purchasing a license for all > music is going to be rather expensive, > especially when you don't want a whole > lot of it.
I would assume this is a subscription, so I can get updates when new music comes out. You probably purchase archive material by the year. Personally, I'd do the "all recorded music" license with lower bit-rate files, and only offer the individual files with higher bit rates.
> I have better things to spend my money on!
And that's the beauty of markets. If everyone is like you, we get the things you prefer to buy. If nobody is like you, we lose them.
When my 1989 Dodge Omni went into the shop, they found that the computer was failing and needed to be replaced. Being a true geek, I asked if I could have the old one. They shrugged and handed it over.
After a reasonably frustrating time getting the case open, I uncovered a VIC-20 motherboard fitted with a bunch of massive heat sinks.
> properly motivated employees can > produce great things
And, conversely, unmotivated or badly motivated employees generally cannot. This isn't an absolute... even a blind dog finds a bone once in a while... but it's certainly not sustainable.
Slashdot Mirror
> I have not just a moral right to, but
> what should be a legal right to as well
You *have* that legal right. You are allowed to reverse engineer your software to see how it works. You are allowed to patch your software to make it work however you like. You are even allowed to distribute your patches and instructions on how to install them.
You're just not allowed to sell or give away *copies* of the software, modified or unmodified. And strangely enough, that condition is acceptable in an open source license according to OSI's standards, so I don't really see a problem.
Except, of course, that most people don't want to learn assembly language and reverse engineer their software. Most people also don't want to learn C++ and debug their software, though, so it's something of a moot point.
Basically, the only thing open source REALLY gives you that you don't get with commercial products is the right to sell someone else's hard work without giving them any of the money.
So please, explain to me why that's such a great thing. Imagine that I've written some software. Why do *you* deserve to sell it for profit?
> Surely in ancient times psycopathy would not
> have got you far. You'd likely be expelled
> from a society or likely killed.
I'd think the psychopaths would probably be the ones doing the killing.
> more people *write* stuff in PHP than
? form_cat=160
> write stuff in Perl. Well, that's harder
> to measure
How about this?
http://sourceforge.net/softwaremap/trove_list.php
Perl (6020 projects)
PHP (11536 projects)
IMO, this sample is actually skewed toward Perl, because Perl is very popular in the open source community. In the larger community of all software developers, including commercial proprietary packages and internal development projects, I believe you'll find that Perl is significantly less common than these figures represent. Not many people are writing Perl commercially, but a lot of people (like me) are writing PHP commercially. There are also a lot fewer schoolchildren learning Perl than there are learning PHP.
Same for Java. On Sourceforge, Java and C++ run just about neck and neck:
C++ (16060 projects)
Java (15800 projects)
However, when I say C++, I'm really talking about C/C++ because all C is valid C++. So let's include C as well:
C (15360 projects)
Looks like about the same ratio. C and C++ represent about twice as many projects as Java. And again, Java is more popular in open source circles than it is in commercial and internal development, so the sample is probably skewed toward Java.
Of course, there may also be legions of Perl and Java programmers that have blacklisted SourceForge from the community because they disagreed with it.
> so much more mainstream, so much more widely
> deployed and relied on
By that definition, machine language is even MORE widely deployed and relied on. Are you proposing that machine language is mainstream?
I think "mainstream" is less about who's RUNNING a given language, and more about who's WRITING it.
I see nothing wrong with Jonathan making an honest effort to create a good standard, even if he is going it alone at the moment.
Of course, his PHP mail() configuration is hosed. Yeah, I take it seriously when a guy writing RSS standards can't configure his server. Sure. Whatever. But it can happen to anyone, so I won't pass judgement on that alone.
I read the standard, went to the forum, and pointed out some valid concerns about one of its sections.
The response to those concerns will tell me just how seriously to take this RSS 3 thing. If Jonathan has any business writing a standard, he'll have some cogent thoughts about these concerns, and I'll be perfectly willing to join the community. If not... meh. RSS isn't exactly at the top of my "cool" list anyway.
So... lots of people need Perl programmers, and not many people need PHP programmers. Wouldn't that naturally imply that the people who want PHP programmers already have them? Doesn't a distinct *lack* of Perl programmers among those who want them present some evidence that they're thin on the ground?
Just look at the overall developer community. C++ and PHP groups get a boatload of traffic from an overwhelming number of participants. Java and Perl groups don't; they get a lot less traffic from a lot fewer people.
And the signal-to-noise ratio is OUTRAGEOUSLY higher.
If you're an experienced developer who wants to communicate with other experienced developers, you have to go where those developers are. In the massive communities around C++ and PHP, you can't get a good SNR because you're surrounded by all these idiots. There are smart people there, but the idiots are always in the way, so you can't find them. You have to go somewhere the idiots simply can't get over the bar, or at least find it a hostile enough environment that they leave rapidly.
So you have three choices: a difficult technology, an unpopular technology, or an intolerant community. These strip out the idiots and make it easier to find people worth your time and effort. And while difficult technlogies and intolerant communities might be seen as drawbacks, EVERY technology eventually becomes obsolete and thus unpopular. So after you've been in the industry long enough, *something* you like and know will end up unpopular enough that you can join a community focused around it and enjoy an idiot-free experience.
It's not the argument that bothered me, it's the threat. "You'd better agree with me in public, or I'll DESTROY you!"
I don't think so. I'm going to go over here where you can't do squat, which takes away the tiny little insignificant amount of support I give *you*. It won't destroy you, but I don't really want to play that game anyway. One of these days, Tom may need *my* help with something, and do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to help him. Because that's what this community is about, and a personal disagreement shouldn't affect that. The chance of Tom ever *specifically* needing my help is certainly slim to none, but it's the principle of the thing.
In any case, I'm one of the very few people who wrote all their CGI scripts in C for several years, because that's what worked best for me. Eventually, PHP and ASP showed up. I remember being very excited at the release of PHP/FI 2.0, but when I look at the feature list today, I can't remember why.
I stopped using Perl over ten years ago, when I had a disagreement with Tom Christiansen and he seriously threatened to blacklist me from the Perl community if I didn't agree with him. I told him to go ahead, because I would simply never write Perl again. He laughed and told me to let him know how that went.
Well, it went just fine. I haven't written a single line of Perl since that day, and I haven't missed it one bit.
These days, with so many options available, I think Perl appeals to a certain kind of developer in much the same way Java does. You don't really NEED it, in the sense that many other things can do the same job... but it's a point of style. Java and Perl now serve primarily as focal points for very small and specific communities that otherwise wouldn't really exist in a coherent fashion, much like APL or Objective-C. Ruby is similar, and I don't really see it going mainstream. These sorts of niche technologies still do the job, and selecting one of them instead of a more "mainstream" language like PHP or C++ identifies you as a particular kind of person.
The idea here is that the spammers can't easily tell the difference between a complaint and an order, so filtering hurts their business.
> DDOSing one spammer out of action
This is not a DDOS. You're sending the spammer exactly as much mail as he sent out. Any sensible person who sends X number of ads should be prepared to receive X number of responses. Up till now, it's been essentially impossible for anyone to send a negative response; any response says either "yes I would like your product" or "yes this is a valid email address you can sell to other scumbags".
Now that they can receive responses that say "nobody saw or read your mail", they are getting pretty much what we get when they spam us: a pain in the ass with no redeeming value. Their natural desire is to stop it, which they can do by removing the relevant addresses from their lists, which is what we wanted in the first place.
This isn't an ideal option, but it's the first one I've seen without a discernible downside risk for non-spammers.
> Sending thousands of emails to the company
> would be much more effective
And then, for only $250, I could get millions of annoying emails sent to some company I don't like. Such as my competitors, for example. I just have to pretend I'm advertising their services!
Blue Frog essentially responds to spam with complaints. So spammer X sends fifty thousand spam mail messages to Blue Frog users, and he gets fifty thousand complaints back. It's an eye-for-an-eye technique done properly: one spam, one complaint.
I see this as having two major effects. First, it keeps the spam away from you. Second, it informs the spammer that nobody read his spam. Spammers *depend* on human beings reading their spam. As long as nobody reads it, nobody buys.
To paraphrase, if you're looking for John's name in a document, you can pretty rapidly narrow your search to something that turns up John's name. But if you're looking for John's phone number, things are a little different. The average guy who doesn't grok regex searching is going to have a tough time with that.
So Microsoft proposes a mechanism that emphasises all the numeric data in a document, even if textual. Pretty good feature. Probably something that could be challenged on the grounds that it's just another "language" with syntax highlighting applied, which is an old, old, old technique.
> I am most interested in the object and
> economic systems.
From your rules, you seem most interested in player *control* of the object and economic systems under a system that prevents unfairness. I don't think anyone can really argue that this is a *bad* thing.
But what exactly does this add to the *game*? It seems like a political concept more than a game concept. It smacks of "workers' control of the means of production" - not that I find it socialist at all, but it's the same basic class of idea. I'm interested in knowing how an open player-directed economy will be more likely to enhance the game than damage it.
A PKI solution to the object duping problem looks workable, although I haven't gone into the details too much yet.
The flaw there is that the casual gamer is never supposed to *get* to the high levels. The assumption is that casual gamers will play for a while, then quit. Meanwhile, the hardcore gamers get bored with frequent milestones, so they need to be moved farther apart.
;)
I've always thought it would be more productive to have a game with multiple unrelated objectives. Do away with the single measure of power, and let people figure out on their own what they want to do. In theory, the casual gamer will then settle into something with frequent milestones, while the hardcore gamer tackles massive tasks that bear fruit once a month.
The only way to do this effectively is the way GTA and "The Sims" have done it: model interesting systems until interesting behavior naturally falls out of them. It's possible to amuse yourself for extended periods in GTA without completing more than one or two missions, and "The Sims" doesn't even *have* missions.
But nobody ever listens to me. Which is just fine, because if I ever have the funding and the time to build it, I'll have no competition.
> He failed at the majority of them with SW:G
;)
True, but he knows that. (Most of these rules predate SW:G. I know mine do, and they're arranged roughly chronologically.)
These laws are an ideal in progress. Nobody implements them perfectly. Some of them are contradictory. Others present problems with multiple solutions, all of them bad.
One of Raph's biggest problems has always been that he needs approval from the management and cooperation from the design and development teams to make them happen. He's gotten more of that at SW:G than he did at UO, but he still doesn't have the 100% faith and trust he needs to make his idealised vision that follows as many rules as is practical.
Of course, I'm biased, as you'd know if you read far enough down the list to find Darklock's first and second laws.
> Frankly, you've improperly extended my
> argument.
That's funny; I thought you had improperly extended mine.
> I was arguing that appropriate was not the
> same as legally acceptable.
Whereas both are perfectly acceptable synonyms for "okay". So while you may prefer "legally acceptable", it is perfectly fine for me to prefer "appropriate", which does not make either one of us wrong.
> I was arguing to the larger point
I think you've rather MISSED the point.
Privacy is a social construct. It is something we have because we have *agreed* to extend it to one another. It isn't about definitions and laws and regulations, it's about understanding what other people want and respecting their wishes. You can't legislate that effectively, so the law is always an inappropriate measure of whether something is a breach of privacy.
In essence, you have violated my privacy when you pass my information to the wrong person, and only *I* decide whether a given person is wrong or right. The converse applies; if I tell your "real name" to someone I know, that might be a violation of privacy. I don't know. Only *you* know.
We can't make any real productive progress in defining and protecting privacy until we all recognise and understand that privacy is just another name for courtesy. We don't go telling people one another's personal information, because it would be *rude*. So if you want to protect privacy, you need to protect courtesy, which means getting a handle on this alarming rise in sheer rudeness in modern society.
> And am I non-racist if I thought a kike was
> a derogatory name for a German?
That depends. Are Germans a race? If so, you're still racist... unless you're German, of course, in which case you have a healthy sense of humility and a disarming sense of self-aggrandizing humor.
Which seems rather racist, doesn't it?
But we ARE consistent. We consistently make no value judgements on which side of the security fence is the "right" side.
> Actually, it is ok to tell fart jokes in
> math class. Appropriate, maybe not.
So it depends on what your definition of "is" is?
> you have no reason to expect privacy in
> that no one will retell your fart joke
> elsewhere either
You're improperly extending the metaphor. The point is to illustrate that what is okay to say in one place may not be okay to say in another.
Perhaps a better example would be if your friend were to say "hey, tell that kike joke". When you're sitting around with a bunch of Catholics, that may be perfectly fine. When you're sitting around with a bunch of Jews, it's decidedly NOT fine, and much of the outrage will fall on YOU for knowing "that kike joke" in the first place.
It's a different public place. It's not okay to tell fart jokes in math class, but it's perfectly fine to tell them on the playground... even though in this case, IT'S THE SAME PEOPLE.
> there are a lot of folks that don't
> -want- their OSS work to be
> commercialized by anyone else
And yet, you can't stop anyone else from selling your code under the GPL. So the GPL doesn't work here, either. In fact, *no* open source license works. You would have to develop copyrighted freeware with source. And that wouldn't work, either; it already failed in the eighties.
If you don't want anyone but you to commercialise a project, you have to withhold it from the market until you decide to commercialise it. We call this "proprietary" software, and many people are already doing it.
> The BSD is a great license, but that is
> actually a -weakness-, IMO - that anyone
> can take BSD code, make a new product out
> of it, and not have to release those
> changes back to the community.
This is what we call "freedom". The GPL trades it for "security". (Somebody in the early history of the U.S. said something about that once.)
Here's the question. Let's say you write some code, and you share it. I see your code, and it gives me an idea; I want to write some more code. Who should decide what I can do with my code?
The GPL thinks *you* should decide. Once I've seen your code, my new code is implementing an idea that was a derivative work of your code, so you should be able to tell me what I can do with it. Unfortunately, I can't "unsee" your code or "unknow" my idea.
The BSD license thinks *I* should decide. After all, I wrote the code, so you can help yourself to a big healthy serving of STFU.
The really *big* difference in what the GPL means as opposed to what the BSD license means isn't really evident to the developer, it's evident to the reseller. Take two companies, A and B. A releases a project that took years to build. B grabs that project and makes a minor modification to it in a couple weeks. Now B has a project worth more than A's project. How can A respond?
Under the GPL, B must release their changes, and A can now sell the exact same project. The playing field is leveled. Nobody has an advantage.
Under the BSD license, B does not have to release their changes. A does not have what B has developed. B has obtained a commercial advantage. However, A does not have to release everything they do, either. They can now turn around and release their own changes, and perhaps gain a commercial advantage over B.
So which license is better? It depends on your development and marketing muscle. If you have more marketers than developers, the GPL is superior, because all you have to do is shout louder to get more users. If you have more developers than marketers, the BSD license is superior, because it allows you to differentiate your product in the marketplace.
So which side are you on?
> Someone's account was deleted because they
> posted someone's home address without their
> permission. Funny thing was, the guy's address
> was readily available on his own web site.
I've posted my cell phone number in a public forum before. I posted it there because I wanted the people in that forum to have it for a specific purpose.
But if you were to find my cell phone number on that forum, and post it (without permission) in ANOTHER forum, that would be an invasion of privacy.
Essentially, I choose where I want to say things. And if I choose to say something over HERE, you don't have any natural right to repeat it over THERE except under certain very narrow guidelines. Some of those guidelines are legal, like the "fair use" provisions under copyright. Some of them are contractual, like the TOS on a web site. And some of them are social, like not posting people's unobfuscated email addresses.
We're not all on the same page about the social guidelines, but they're the most important aspect. Privacy is an agreement between people that we will not repeat certain information to others, because you would not like them to have it. When we don't have that agreement and understanding, privacy gets compromised. We need to understand and accept that certain people are not going to protect our privacy, and either stop talking to them or accept the breaches of privacy that come from it.
The CNet article had a dilemma. On the one hand, they needed to refrain from publishing information that violated privacy. On the other, they had to demonstrate that the information was something to worry about. So they had to cross that line, but just *slightly*, enough to illuminate the problem without being outrageous.
I think they made a pretty good choice, under the circumstances... but I think they should have made a slightly better one by choosing to "out" the address of someone at CNet (with permission!) instead of someone at Google.
And I still think Google is overreacting. It was a good hack. They should appreciate that.
Sony treats developers like crap. You have to jump through thirty thousand hoops to get any interest from them at all, and it takes forever.
Microsoft, on the other hand, knows that the really HUGE successes are just as likely to come from a high school student as from an industry luminary... so they aren't as quick to dismiss someone for lack of experience.
In the end, Sony will lose, because Microsoft is cementing relationships with gamers that will produce the NEXT big thing... while Sony is turning up their nose to keep hanging out with the people who made the last one.
> that terabyte of space would be wasted
Most people drive in pretty limited areas, so that terabyte of space could be used to cache data for your usual driving area. When you drive somewhere else, you probably ask the GPS to give you directions, and it can cache the suggested route. It's not that bad an idea. Note also that he says "photorealistic", so I'd imagine large stretches of highway and desert would probably be simulated until satellite imagery is available to update it (and determined to contain useful information).
> I'm also confused on his ideas on buying
> a license for all music... and then
> playing $.16 for each song... Don't those
> ideas contradict themselves..?
Don't free radio, $1 song downloads, and $16 CDs contradict themselves? No. They're used in different ways. And I think it's ludicrous to suggest that EVERYONE will have a terabyte iPod; there will be people who do things different ways, and the market will support them.
Furthermore, if I read the article right, there is a website offering 16 cent songs *now*... which is only peripherally related to how music will be licensed for the terabyte iPod. It's an indication that the "per song" model is already being challenged and tested.
> I'm sure purchasing a license for all
> music is going to be rather expensive,
> especially when you don't want a whole
> lot of it.
I would assume this is a subscription, so I can get updates when new music comes out. You probably purchase archive material by the year. Personally, I'd do the "all recorded music" license with lower bit-rate files, and only offer the individual files with higher bit rates.
> I have better things to spend my money on!
And that's the beauty of markets. If everyone is like you, we get the things you prefer to buy. If nobody is like you, we lose them.
I *liked* new Coke and Crystal Pepsi.
When my 1989 Dodge Omni went into the shop, they found that the computer was failing and needed to be replaced. Being a true geek, I asked if I could have the old one. They shrugged and handed it over.
After a reasonably frustrating time getting the case open, I uncovered a VIC-20 motherboard fitted with a bunch of massive heat sinks.
No, I am not kidding.
> properly motivated employees can
> produce great things
And, conversely, unmotivated or badly motivated employees generally cannot. This isn't an absolute... even a blind dog finds a bone once in a while... but it's certainly not sustainable.
Brilliant article. I'm going to go BLOG about it!