... why do we see no innovation in Open Source software? Why is it simply a rehashing of what has been done before years after it is done elsewhere?
According to your hypothesis, GPL has infinite manpower. Why, then, do 99% of GPL projects have a single author and why are they only improved by that one author until they are abandoned? You see, the Linux OS and the few other large open source projects are an extreme oddity in the open source world. Yes, they stick out, as they should, they are quite good working copies of other peoples work done as hobbies in peoples spare time.
However, if you consider the tens of thousands of open source programs out there, you will soon see that GPL has severely limited manpower.
Will this change? No. Why? Because the majority of people that program nowadays do not do it as a hobby - they do it as a job. They are not 50 yr old ex-plumbers who picked up programming after a few college courses or college students, which is where the majority of open source software comes from. Either people who picked it up late in life or people just getting started early in life. The people learning programming right now are learning it as their trade skill and that's what they'll get a job doing. If anything, the open source pool of developers should shrink.
As well, the number of projects that are very good but have to be abandoned because someones wife has a baby or because their new "day job" (which they hate) takes too much time is a real shame, but a necessity.
If programming in your field (the open source one) is looked upon as simply a hobby, it will be treated as such.
If anyone remembers this extremely offensive door game, I'm sure they're creaming themselves and salivating on their keyboard just waiting for the day when they can relive it.
Don't bother hunting it down and trying to run it, its written in such a way that it won't work unless you're actually running a BBS... no local mode.
You are ignoring that they are right. Something on the order of 0.5% of PC users actually use Linux. And you know what? Probably only 10 or 20 percent of THAT number would actually be willing to pay for software, let alone a game.
The number of Linux-only (no dual boot) users who want brand new 3D games as a priority that they'll spend their money on? I'm guessing its a single digit. And I'm not joking.
You see, you can't make a good showing because you don't have the numbers to make a good showing...
Instead, you CAN get these games on Linux. I don't imagine that if you offered to live in Blizzard's parkinglot and stay out of their programmers ways (they're getting PAID, their time is more valuable than yours) and port it for free that they'd ignore you...
Esperandi What is infinity? The ratio of open source users screaming for a new product to the number of open source programmers.
Well, I think Diablo 2 just is not going to happen for at least a long while. Realistically I think that porting System Shock 2 and Half Life would be the biggest boons to Linux.... if Linux ever gets their 3D card drivers in decent order (just a matter of time, I'm sure, but they pretty much blow right now), these games would be my vote.
System Shock 2 just rocked me up one side and down the other when I played it a year or so ago. It's about time the couple thousand gamers using Linux (anyone have hard numbers? I'm just assuming the overwhelming majority of Linux use is business and government oriented) got a taste of System Shock 2. Hopefully it won't slow down kernel development;)
I don't think you should let misled, stupid people influence your vocabulary... nanotechnology sounds so much cooler and actually means what it says. Designer materials sounds like 800-year old metallurgy or maybe inventing a better polyester. Don't let the bastards grind you down, call it nanotech and when they flare, smack em in the chops.
"Has anyone looked at the actual/. logs anywhere? It would be interesting to see where people are coming from. "
Unless you believe in balkanization and are a bigot that believes the dirt you are born on means a single thing about what you know, believe, or could be right about, knowing where people are coming from is comletely uninteresting...
Typing is much more than simply socializing, there is full-motion video, instant-access to reference materials to verify veracity, there is no way for the person to overpower or out-shout you in a discussion, it cannot degenerate into a shouting match or a physical confrontation. Also, there is no small talk, eye contact, body language, physical contact, scents or proximity... all of which are annoying as hell unless its with a person you're going out with.
You have quite a trendy viewpoint, but its wrong. Yes, the patent system is being abused. You know what? It has been abused before. This is not the first industry to have this happen. The solution is to get some people in the patent office that can actually judge these things. Or challenge the patents.
But challenging patents takes lawyers and money. Well, don't worry, as usual, the big corporations are going to protect you here (feel free to continue to bite their hand as it feeds you). They'll knock down the "obvious" patents in time.
As for where the technologies come from, you are completely clueless. The Open Source community? Give me a break! If it were released Open Source, it would be prior art because it would be sprinkled over the net and any simple websearch would turn it up. Nothing that has been patented is Open Source... everything open source is prior art, catch-up work. What happens if someone in the open source dimension actually invents something new? Put it on the net. Make it visible to search engines and such. Blammo, no one can patent your idea and you guarantee that no one will make the mistake of thinking your invention is worth money.
Esperandi Peeved when people don't believe that they'd be dead and buried without corporations.
Yes, you be right, thanks for the correction. i went on a Gibson binge and read nearly all of his books in a month (what a boy won't do when he runs out of Neal Stephenson novels)... I've never heard of All Tomorrows Parties though, is it new or old? I'll have to go do some searching;)
yeah, that's what it means now, Gibson was postulating a possible escalation of the term to describe a seriously "disordered" part of society, it goes beyond obsession into severe dysfunction, I should have made that clear, I figured I'd get a bunch of replies saying it means nerd and house... which it does, currently.
Esperandi Otaku Programmer and everything else dealing with computers except networking
Yep, that's an otaku... they're never seen outside of their house and they do not attempt to integrate in any way, not even the way that I described the virtual worlds could be used for in a good way, they mostly just build the virtual worlds they live in and make them bigger and better, benefitting no one but the other people in the same virtual space... The word Otaku is supposed to connotate a very serious and disturbing disorder, not simple agoraphobia or even simple anti-social tendencies... I wish I could remember the definition the book gave, I used to have it memorized when I choze Otaku as an IRC nick... but it was very bad.
Esperandi Right now Otaku just means 'nerd' BTW... literally it means "house" and it used to refer to someone who stays at home playing video games or "playing" with the computer all the time.
You forgot what to couple it with... the cyberdildonics suits that you can already buy that provide "remote stimulation" for that travelling businessman, so he can pleasure his woman over the net... I'm not lying either, search for cyberdildonics and you should find it... the suit is pretty cheap too.
"Ex2. In Quake, you walk up to someone, hit them point blank with a rocket, and land on two feet and keep walking if you have enough health. But not if you feel like you got blown back halfway across the room in real life like the guy on the screen did. You'll rip out the mouse cord falling backwards. "
This could be even more amplified with the VR chestplate things they have out now that you can buy for a few grand.... they make you actually feel like you got kicked in the chest! That plus this balance thing would make things like rocket-jumping a bad trip;)
Esperandi Having too much fun with this very fun topic
I seem to recall a book about simulated reality (until we actually leave reality (never) we cannot have 'virtual' reality since virtual is something that does not exist - even in electrons pulsing through a CPI) that mentioned this very fact... I wish I could remember the authors name, he's fairly famous... ahh, Howard Rheingold! I'm 79.023% convinced that was his name... pretty good book, tackles this idea as well as simulating the other senses in not-so-stupid ways (most ways of simulating smell are pretty stupid)
Esperandi Will market locked safe-SR boxes when simulated reality goes big.... so your body doesn't get stolen whilel your mind is playing.
Human beings are not made for running at 999MPH, this device or a descendant of it could be used to simulate that, couldn't it? Other such things should be possible. Given that motion can induce sickness, fast heartbeat, and other such things, I see a few possibilities... desensitization, discovery ofall-new motion-related health problems that are primarily or wholly psychosomatic...
Esperandi Brings back the brain in a jar solipsism...
It sounds like you are describing what the word "Otaku" means in William Gibsons book Virtual Light (or maybe it was Mona Lisa Overdrive, I forget, I read them back to back)... basically its a person who never leaves their house, spending most of their time in a sort of "alternate reality." But its not all bad, the alternate reality afford people a tremendous amount of power and a 16 yr old can control an entire corporation without anyone knowing he's only 16 - he succeeds on his merits... but in society such people are looked upon as anti-social and such pretty much like anyone who spends a lot of time in online worlds (MUDs, etc) does now...
Esperandi It always amazes me that people couldl consider me antisocial when I sit in a chat room with 200 people, listening to and talking to every single one of them.... its more social than offline people could ever possibly be.
One quick application I think that would be possible is making Everquest's "drunkedness" interface even more extreme;)
Esperandi Of course people get sick seeing it happen now, with actually feeling the movement, people would prolly be losing their cookies all over their keyboard.
hehe, you didn't watch close enough, the bugs didn't launch asteroids out their arse, and they didn't do it intentionally... they shot some kind of energy blast plasma crap out their butts and knocked the asteroids loose of their orbits, quite accidentally, but after a few smashed into the earth, earth had to retaliate... and no I'm not saying THAT bit is believable, I was meaning the advances of humans, like the weapons and junk... the unisex showers and dorms would be a believable and great advance...
All of Starship Troopers is believable, except at the end where they capture the "bug brain" and instantly celebrate because they'll completely know how the bugs work... yeah, right, because we figured out our own the first time someone cracked open their skull.
And yes, I am ignoring advancements in research tools because assuming that the alien brain would in any way resemble anything we'd studeied up to that point is equally as laughable.
BTW, I hope people don't stop writing wildly speculative pieces like this, I collect them. I've got a speculation pamphlet thing from the 1940-something world fair... an amzing amount of it happened, but in completely different ways form what they imagined. Example: They prdicted that by 2000 we'd be able to sit in a chair and get moved around a store from product to product without walking around the store and searching for things. We have it and its called e-commerce, but it doesn't look anything like what they imagined, its better!
Esperandi For anyone who is disappointed with the technology level at 2000, thinking we should have flying cars and such (www.moller.com, we do), look around you! This is better than any sci-fi fantasy! I can't wait till I'm 50 and microwavable meals taste better than anything gourmet you can conceive of today.
Your brain is trained and geared to manipulate the human body and manuever it through reality. How would it function in a computer? Simply having a copy would not be enough, you'd have to create some sort of "Human Virtual Machine" to emulate the body, at least until the brain could be taught to use its parts in different ways....
Esperandi When you put rats in a maze, you prove nothing about rats. There are no buttons in nature, there are no mazes with uniform walls...
I don't know why you think Eiffel is proprietary.... its portable as all get out and there are dozens of different compilers for different platforms including an Open Source GPL one someone replied to you about....
Slashdot Mirror
... why do we see no innovation in Open Source software? Why is it simply a rehashing of what has been done before years after it is done elsewhere?
According to your hypothesis, GPL has infinite manpower. Why, then, do 99% of GPL projects have a single author and why are they only improved by that one author until they are abandoned? You see, the Linux OS and the few other large open source projects are an extreme oddity in the open source world. Yes, they stick out, as they should, they are quite good working copies of other peoples work done as hobbies in peoples spare time.
However, if you consider the tens of thousands of open source programs out there, you will soon see that GPL has severely limited manpower.
Will this change? No. Why? Because the majority of people that program nowadays do not do it as a hobby - they do it as a job. They are not 50 yr old ex-plumbers who picked up programming after a few college courses or college students, which is where the majority of open source software comes from. Either people who picked it up late in life or people just getting started early in life. The people learning programming right now are learning it as their trade skill and that's what they'll get a job doing. If anything, the open source pool of developers should shrink.
As well, the number of projects that are very good but have to be abandoned because someones wife has a baby or because their new "day job" (which they hate) takes too much time is a real shame, but a necessity.
If programming in your field (the open source one) is looked upon as simply a hobby, it will be treated as such.
Esperandi
CRIPPLE SMASH!
If anyone remembers this extremely offensive door game, I'm sure they're creaming themselves and salivating on their keyboard just waiting for the day when they can relive it.
Don't bother hunting it down and trying to run it, its written in such a way that it won't work unless you're actually running a BBS... no local mode.
Esperandi
You are ignoring that they are right. Something on the order of 0.5% of PC users actually use Linux. And you know what? Probably only 10 or 20 percent of THAT number would actually be willing to pay for software, let alone a game.
The number of Linux-only (no dual boot) users who want brand new 3D games as a priority that they'll spend their money on? I'm guessing its a single digit. And I'm not joking.
You see, you can't make a good showing because you don't have the numbers to make a good showing...
Instead, you CAN get these games on Linux. I don't imagine that if you offered to live in Blizzard's parkinglot and stay out of their programmers ways (they're getting PAID, their time is more valuable than yours) and port it for free that they'd ignore you...
Esperandi
What is infinity? The ratio of open source users screaming for a new product to the number of open source programmers.
Well, I think Diablo 2 just is not going to happen for at least a long while. Realistically I think that porting System Shock 2 and Half Life would be the biggest boons to Linux.... if Linux ever gets their 3D card drivers in decent order (just a matter of time, I'm sure, but they pretty much blow right now), these games would be my vote.
;)
System Shock 2 just rocked me up one side and down the other when I played it a year or so ago. It's about time the couple thousand gamers using Linux (anyone have hard numbers? I'm just assuming the overwhelming majority of Linux use is business and government oriented) got a taste of System Shock 2. Hopefully it won't slow down kernel development
Esperandi
I don't think you should let misled, stupid people influence your vocabulary... nanotechnology sounds so much cooler and actually means what it says. Designer materials sounds like 800-year old metallurgy or maybe inventing a better polyester. Don't let the bastards grind you down, call it nanotech and when they flare, smack em in the chops.
Esperandi
"Has anyone looked at the actual /. logs anywhere? It would be interesting to see where people are coming from. "
Unless you believe in balkanization and are a bigot that believes the dirt you are born on means a single thing about what you know, believe, or could be right about, knowing where people are coming from is comletely uninteresting...
Esperandi
Typing is much more than simply socializing, there is full-motion video, instant-access to reference materials to verify veracity, there is no way for the person to overpower or out-shout you in a discussion, it cannot degenerate into a shouting match or a physical confrontation. Also, there is no small talk, eye contact, body language, physical contact, scents or proximity... all of which are annoying as hell unless its with a person you're going out with.
Esperandi
You have quite a trendy viewpoint, but its wrong. Yes, the patent system is being abused. You know what? It has been abused before. This is not the first industry to have this happen. The solution is to get some people in the patent office that can actually judge these things. Or challenge the patents.
But challenging patents takes lawyers and money. Well, don't worry, as usual, the big corporations are going to protect you here (feel free to continue to bite their hand as it feeds you). They'll knock down the "obvious" patents in time.
As for where the technologies come from, you are completely clueless. The Open Source community? Give me a break! If it were released Open Source, it would be prior art because it would be sprinkled over the net and any simple websearch would turn it up. Nothing that has been patented is Open Source... everything open source is prior art, catch-up work. What happens if someone in the open source dimension actually invents something new? Put it on the net. Make it visible to search engines and such. Blammo, no one can patent your idea and you guarantee that no one will make the mistake of thinking your invention is worth money.
Esperandi
Peeved when people don't believe that they'd be dead and buried without corporations.
Yes, you be right, thanks for the correction. i went on a Gibson binge and read nearly all of his books in a month (what a boy won't do when he runs out of Neal Stephenson novels)... I've never heard of All Tomorrows Parties though, is it new or old? I'll have to go do some searching ;)
Esperandi
Snow Crash still rocks my ass.
yeah, that's what it means now, Gibson was postulating a possible escalation of the term to describe a seriously "disordered" part of society, it goes beyond obsession into severe dysfunction, I should have made that clear, I figured I'd get a bunch of replies saying it means nerd and house... which it does, currently.
Esperandi
Otaku Programmer and everything else dealing with computers except networking
Yep, that's an otaku... they're never seen outside of their house and they do not attempt to integrate in any way, not even the way that I described the virtual worlds could be used for in a good way, they mostly just build the virtual worlds they live in and make them bigger and better, benefitting no one but the other people in the same virtual space... The word Otaku is supposed to connotate a very serious and disturbing disorder, not simple agoraphobia or even simple anti-social tendencies... I wish I could remember the definition the book gave, I used to have it memorized when I choze Otaku as an IRC nick... but it was very bad.
Esperandi
Right now Otaku just means 'nerd' BTW... literally it means "house" and it used to refer to someone who stays at home playing video games or "playing" with the computer all the time.
Lots of people get motion-sick from Q3 and similar FPS games... not everyone gets it.
Esperandi
And I know motion sickness is a bitch, I had it very bad for a long time until I got glasses.
You forgot what to couple it with... the cyberdildonics suits that you can already buy that provide "remote stimulation" for that travelling businessman, so he can pleasure his woman over the net... I'm not lying either, search for cyberdildonics and you should find it... the suit is pretty cheap too.
Esperandi
Are you aware that the vest you're talking about already exists? I don't think its made by Bose, but its out there...
Esperandi
And it costs a few grand too, but they say it will make you feel like you got kicked in the chest.
"Ex2. In Quake, you walk up to someone, hit them point blank with a rocket, and land on two feet and keep walking if you have enough health. But not if you feel like you got blown back halfway across the room in real life like the guy on the screen did. You'll rip out the mouse cord falling backwards. "
;)
This could be even more amplified with the VR chestplate things they have out now that you can buy for a few grand.... they make you actually feel like you got kicked in the chest! That plus this balance thing would make things like rocket-jumping a bad trip
Esperandi
Having too much fun with this very fun topic
The choice in the new millenium of video games!
Esperandi
Awaiting holographic hentai games... ohhh.... vibrating mirror...
Don't take the headset off!
If you MUST do something like drive a car, pipe the visual data into the helmet and watch it like a video game...
Esperandi
I seem to recall a book about simulated reality (until we actually leave reality (never) we cannot have 'virtual' reality since virtual is something that does not exist - even in electrons pulsing through a CPI) that mentioned this very fact... I wish I could remember the authors name, he's fairly famous... ahh, Howard Rheingold! I'm 79.023% convinced that was his name... pretty good book, tackles this idea as well as simulating the other senses in not-so-stupid ways (most ways of simulating smell are pretty stupid)
Esperandi
Will market locked safe-SR boxes when simulated reality goes big.... so your body doesn't get stolen whilel your mind is playing.
Human beings are not made for running at 999MPH, this device or a descendant of it could be used to simulate that, couldn't it? Other such things should be possible. Given that motion can induce sickness, fast heartbeat, and other such things, I see a few possibilities... desensitization, discovery ofall-new motion-related health problems that are primarily or wholly psychosomatic...
Esperandi
Brings back the brain in a jar solipsism...
It sounds like you are describing what the word "Otaku" means in William Gibsons book Virtual Light (or maybe it was Mona Lisa Overdrive, I forget, I read them back to back)... basically its a person who never leaves their house, spending most of their time in a sort of "alternate reality." But its not all bad, the alternate reality afford people a tremendous amount of power and a 16 yr old can control an entire corporation without anyone knowing he's only 16 - he succeeds on his merits... but in society such people are looked upon as anti-social and such pretty much like anyone who spends a lot of time in online worlds (MUDs, etc) does now...
Esperandi
It always amazes me that people couldl consider me antisocial when I sit in a chat room with 200 people, listening to and talking to every single one of them.... its more social than offline people could ever possibly be.
One quick application I think that would be possible is making Everquest's "drunkedness" interface even more extreme ;)
Esperandi
Of course people get sick seeing it happen now, with actually feeling the movement, people would prolly be losing their cookies all over their keyboard.
hehe, you didn't watch close enough, the bugs didn't launch asteroids out their arse, and they didn't do it intentionally... they shot some kind of energy blast plasma crap out their butts and knocked the asteroids loose of their orbits, quite accidentally, but after a few smashed into the earth, earth had to retaliate... and no I'm not saying THAT bit is believable, I was meaning the advances of humans, like the weapons and junk... the unisex showers and dorms would be a believable and great advance...
Esperandi
All of Starship Troopers is believable, except at the end where they capture the "bug brain" and instantly celebrate because they'll completely know how the bugs work... yeah, right, because we figured out our own the first time someone cracked open their skull.
And yes, I am ignoring advancements in research tools because assuming that the alien brain would in any way resemble anything we'd studeied up to that point is equally as laughable.
BTW, I hope people don't stop writing wildly speculative pieces like this, I collect them. I've got a speculation pamphlet thing from the 1940-something world fair... an amzing amount of it happened, but in completely different ways form what they imagined. Example: They prdicted that by 2000 we'd be able to sit in a chair and get moved around a store from product to product without walking around the store and searching for things. We have it and its called e-commerce, but it doesn't look anything like what they imagined, its better!
Esperandi
For anyone who is disappointed with the technology level at 2000, thinking we should have flying cars and such (www.moller.com, we do), look around you! This is better than any sci-fi fantasy! I can't wait till I'm 50 and microwavable meals taste better than anything gourmet you can conceive of today.
Your brain is trained and geared to manipulate the human body and manuever it through reality. How would it function in a computer? Simply having a copy would not be enough, you'd have to create some sort of "Human Virtual Machine" to emulate the body, at least until the brain could be taught to use its parts in different ways....
Esperandi
When you put rats in a maze, you prove nothing about rats. There are no buttons in nature, there are no mazes with uniform walls...
I don't know why you think Eiffel is proprietary.... its portable as all get out and there are dozens of different compilers for different platforms including an Open Source GPL one someone replied to you about....
Esperandi
Put down the crack pipe son...