True, but the problem is that solar power isn't going to do you very much good when it's in shadow for a month. There are ways around it, but it vastly increases your construction-on-the-moon costs.
I'm not so sure I would bother. Nuclear scales pretty well; why not just increase the size of the nuclear plant by a comparatively small amount to get those amenities?
I'm not sure how respectable their space program actually was, and neither are a lot of people. They did some impressive stuff, but they also had this habit of blowing up on the launchpad or otherwise fucking up - we really have no idea how many cosmonauts died during the Soviet program.
A police officer does not stop being able to restrict your rights by arresting you when he is off-duty. Therefore, they do not have the same privilege of privacy.
No, they are not "just like anyone else." When you are entrusted by the state with abilities that a normal citizen does not have, you willingly put yourself under the microscope.
Firefighters do not have the ability to strip a citizen of their rights.
Police do, and their ability to strip a citizen of their rights doesn't go away when they are off-duty (please don't bring up "citizen's arrest," people, it is a largely ignored concept for a reason). They are entrusted with large responsibilities, so the case for monitoring them is vastly different from that of a regular citizen.
Because in their professional capacity the police are agents of the state. My employer is not the state.
When you choose to seek the power that the police (or elected officials, for that matter) wield, you forfeit the right to be treated as a regular Joe Citizen.
A majority-based representative democracy is no less a representative democracy than a direct-percentage representative democracy. It just has different methods of assigning representation.
Whether or not those different methods are better--that's a different question, and one on which I share similar views to yours; I would much rather more granular representation. But it doesn't stop being a representative democracy because you, personally, have your ox gored.
Where is the business case for me making more content when the first copy I sell can be freely and legally given away to anyone who wants it? This is precisely why the GPL for games is not at all a good idea.
Your post is interesting, and I wish I had time to reply point by point, but a few things:
-I am talking about the GPL in its "ideal state" (the entire kit and kaboodle, assets and all, being GPL'd, which is what the "INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FUHREEEEE" crowd goes on about).
-I am not talking about the LGPL, and I have no problem with the LGPL. I won't use it because, frankly, fuck the FSF. I would use the CDDL or Mozilla Public License instead, which are more favorable to downstream developers (the separation is not at the binary level, where you can't statically link an LGPL library without your own code being infected; the CDDL/MPL places the "boundary" at the code file, and you can have proprietary and CDDL/MPL code files in the same compiled binary with no issues).
-You are one of very few people (I'm another one) who responsibly use AdBlock to reward sites by consenting to let them sell our eyeballs to their advertisers. There aren't many.
-I'm not a game developer who has any interest in sequelitis; in fact, my company's first major project is an X-Wing style space sim which we know isn't going to make a lot of money. We're doing it because we think that catering to the hardcore audience is a decent way for a four-guy company to stay afloat, without cashing in our integrity. (But no, our game engine is very much not going to be LGPL'd. It won't be expensive, but if you want to use it, you're licensing it.)
Right, but if the code is free, why isn't the rest? Going both ways, free code but not free assets, is hypocritical.
Mind you, I don't entirely disagree with you, and I'm sure I could come up with a way to make it work. But if your whole deal isn't GPL'd, it kind of misses the "fweedom!" point according to RMS and his hangers-on.
The fact that there are millions of dollars being funneled into a "Free as in Speech" product and that other methods than proprietary software sales are used to "recoup costs" sounds to me like you're supporting his point again rather than contradicting it.
There are no methods for a game that work the same way. Under the GPL, you sell it to one person and they can give it to everyone else. That isn't going to make you any money. Advertising? They have the code, bye bye advertising display code. Software as a service (an MMO, which only works for one very specific type of game)? Hello, private servers, goodbye revenue.
The pack-in model, including other stuff beside the game, is silly as well. Why? Because you are increasing your production costs to only get above a $0 sale point. All it does is increase your costs, without providing a lot of real value to the end user. Packing a game nominally worth $30 at the market with cost-$5 tchotchkes and then charging $10 for it? Why the hell would any significant group buy it? The game is the product, not the tchotchkes. Selling those won't recoup your investment.
This concept is not bad for some areas. It obviously works for Linux, although the GPL has held back advancement by fucking over driver developers (RMS still says the nVidia driver behavior is against the GPL, it's only because everybody ignores the guy that they persist). I am saying it does not work for a lot of others, and that anti-copyright fake-freedom idiots and GPL zealots alike don't consider anyone else before going I WANT I WANT I WANT.
That sounds like your supporting his position rather than contradicting it. Why do photographers get favored rewards over sculptors or painters?
Most likely because they're more in demand. But the stuff that pirates are pirating is clearly in demand, they just don't want to pay for it.
Maybe single player games and movies are a special case. RMS avoided the question at the last talk I heard which leads me to believe he doesn't have a good answer.
From an economic perspective, I think it very much is. Even from a technical perspective, I think multiplayer games are (easier to cheat if you have the code, harder to catch you).
On the other hand people will still want to see movies and play games and be willing to pay for those games even copyright were changed so drastically.
I don't think they will. Because, frankly, people are fucking selfish bastards and will take what they can take for free. If it's not in front of them, they will never pay. Exceptions exist, but they are basically noise.
In the case of video games look at ToadyOne and DwarfFortress. He manages to develop DF full time off of donations.
Toady is also one guy, making a game that doesn't require a lot of technical expertise outside of code. I like Tarn a lot and I love DF, and I have donated, but I don't know if you've noticed, he isn't making much at all from his work. Enough to live on, yes--barely. Very barely.
Now expand that to a hundred or two hundred people. You're not getting very far.
If the donations were instead considered to be "investment in finishing the game" then you could see a smaller studio would be able to develop a game, even as grand as HL2, assuming they were "able to stand on the shoulders" of those who came before.
No, you really can't. Hint: the programming is not the largest part of making Half-Life 2. Unless you're positing that we see a bunch of recycled models in every game under the sun, you still have to pay for a legion of 3D modelers. Unless you're positing that we see a bunch of recycled textures in every game under the sun, you still have to pay for a bunch of texture artists. Unless you're positing that we hear the same sounds in every game under the sun, you have to pay for sound artists.
There's a lot more to a game than code. (And frankly, open source hasn't done a very good job of that: all the "big names" are derivatives of the originally closed-source Quake. If you want to see what you get for an open source engine, check out Sauerbraten. Try not to laugh.)
I don't disagree with a lot of what you say. I've donated to open source projects, both using my time and my money.
Regarding the entertainment industry, though? The money made is made because it's easier to just pay. (There's also the fact that most people can't have a movie theater in their house--similar stuff can't really be done with a video game.)
And I can think of plenty of open-source projects with a lot of users who don't get donations for their time and effort. Again, Warsow comes to mind.
Red Hat makes money off their services, not their product. If you think about it a bit, that's going to screw, say, game developers, unless you want everything to be MMOs (and even then, private servers will pop up, and then you're fucked).
I don't agree with your assertion at all, and I will accuse you of spreading self-righteous bullshit designed to minimize your own actions within your own head. But in any case, I wasn't talking about piracy to begin with. I was talking about the non-suitably to RMS's sick little pretend-free software to certain industries, such as video games. I dislike piracy, but I don't think it's an industry-killer unless, as your sibling poster rambled on about, it is taken to the extreme where they kill the goose laying the golden eggs. I think it's distasteful, wrong, and more than a little socially irresponsible, but I don't think it'll kill PC gaming. But, no, most people will not "happily" pay for something good. They begrudgingly pay, when they pay at all. Why else would piracy exist if not to avoid paying for that from which you derive benefit? Some people have an evolved moral conscience to consider it to be a like-trade-for-like, money for the utility (enjoyment) derived from the product. Those people I applaud. But do you know how I know it's utter horseshit? Because the overwhelming majority of open-source projects, even very good ones like Warsow, don't net donations enough to buy a steak dinner.
.
And on your little pro-piracy bit: I dislike piracy from a moral reason far more than a financial one. It is wrong to wrong me by not compensating me for the utility you receive from my work. The money isn't as important as the moral wrong being committed.
You can choose not to like copyright all you want. But it'll be here after we're both dead. The difference is that copyright affords me the chance to profit off my own creative ability and, in doing so, perhaps create something that will outlast me. Could I do so if it wasn't a method of making money? Sure. But the economic incentive encourages specialization of labor: if I can make money off creative work, I can specialize in it and get better at it, rather than splitting my work effort between survival work and creative work. Copyright turns both into the same thing. It improves society's creative arts, and piracy is a negative force on this.
The first, a moral argument that at the moment I don't have the patience to flesh out: Why do you _have_ to live from your job? Why is your probably-not-all-that-useful sort-of-contribution to society rewarded while theirs should not be?
The second, a practical one: many forms of modern art are simply too labor- and time-intensive to be done for free. Do you really think Half-Life 2 will be made "as a hobby in [somebody's] free time"? While some programming works can be done for free to the end user, they aren't free to the people making it. Linux would not exist as is if there weren't millions of dollars being funneled into it, and the methods of recouping that investment exist that don't involve direct sales of a product. Such doesn't exist for a lot of other methods that people find very valuable. Without copyright, we'll be introducing you to our old friend, the tragedy of the commons.
So, yes, I have no problem with criminalizing your fellow copyright infringers to protect my livelihood, and, quite frankly, I doubt even your fellow copyright infringers will have a problem with it when they realize that that's where the stuff they're passing around comes from. Taken to the extreme that you and your ilk think they would like, you would kill the goose laying the golden egg.
Slashdot Mirror
I have. He's right. You're a tard.
Whoops, he's desperate for hugs again. Nice modding, manchild.
True, but the problem is that solar power isn't going to do you very much good when it's in shadow for a month. There are ways around it, but it vastly increases your construction-on-the-moon costs.
Prove it.
I'm not so sure I would bother. Nuclear scales pretty well; why not just increase the size of the nuclear plant by a comparatively small amount to get those amenities?
Remember, on the Moon, "day" is 650 hours long.
I'm not sure how respectable their space program actually was, and neither are a lot of people. They did some impressive stuff, but they also had this habit of blowing up on the launchpad or otherwise fucking up - we really have no idea how many cosmonauts died during the Soviet program.
A police officer does not stop being able to restrict your rights by arresting you when he is off-duty. Therefore, they do not have the same privilege of privacy.
No, they are not "just like anyone else." When you are entrusted by the state with abilities that a normal citizen does not have, you willingly put yourself under the microscope.
The same goes for elected officials.
Firefighters do not have the ability to strip a citizen of their rights.
Police do, and their ability to strip a citizen of their rights doesn't go away when they are off-duty (please don't bring up "citizen's arrest," people, it is a largely ignored concept for a reason). They are entrusted with large responsibilities, so the case for monitoring them is vastly different from that of a regular citizen.
Because in their professional capacity the police are agents of the state. My employer is not the state.
When you choose to seek the power that the police (or elected officials, for that matter) wield, you forfeit the right to be treated as a regular Joe Citizen.
I have more karma than you have mod points, Mark.
You're so close to getting that hug!
Keep it up, Mark. That hug is waiting for you!
It's cute how Mark Fink, aka "twitter", keeps going around modding me down because he doesn't like my stance on Mono.
Keep it up, Mark. Maybe Roy Schestowitz will give you a hug someday.
A majority-based representative democracy is no less a representative democracy than a direct-percentage representative democracy. It just has different methods of assigning representation.
Whether or not those different methods are better--that's a different question, and one on which I share similar views to yours; I would much rather more granular representation. But it doesn't stop being a representative democracy because you, personally, have your ox gored.
Wikipedia sucks for a lot of reasons, but this isn't one.
Just cite the application's manual/help file.
Where is the business case for me making more content when the first copy I sell can be freely and legally given away to anyone who wants it? This is precisely why the GPL for games is not at all a good idea.
Your post is interesting, and I wish I had time to reply point by point, but a few things:
-I am talking about the GPL in its "ideal state" (the entire kit and kaboodle, assets and all, being GPL'd, which is what the "INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FUHREEEEE" crowd goes on about).
-I am not talking about the LGPL, and I have no problem with the LGPL. I won't use it because, frankly, fuck the FSF. I would use the CDDL or Mozilla Public License instead, which are more favorable to downstream developers (the separation is not at the binary level, where you can't statically link an LGPL library without your own code being infected; the CDDL/MPL places the "boundary" at the code file, and you can have proprietary and CDDL/MPL code files in the same compiled binary with no issues).
-You are one of very few people (I'm another one) who responsibly use AdBlock to reward sites by consenting to let them sell our eyeballs to their advertisers. There aren't many.
-I'm not a game developer who has any interest in sequelitis; in fact, my company's first major project is an X-Wing style space sim which we know isn't going to make a lot of money. We're doing it because we think that catering to the hardcore audience is a decent way for a four-guy company to stay afloat, without cashing in our integrity. (But no, our game engine is very much not going to be LGPL'd. It won't be expensive, but if you want to use it, you're licensing it.)
Right, but if the code is free, why isn't the rest? Going both ways, free code but not free assets, is hypocritical.
Mind you, I don't entirely disagree with you, and I'm sure I could come up with a way to make it work. But if your whole deal isn't GPL'd, it kind of misses the "fweedom!" point according to RMS and his hangers-on.
I consider computer programming to be in many ways similar to art, yes.
Sorry, missed a bit.
The fact that there are millions of dollars being funneled into a "Free as in Speech" product and that other methods than proprietary software sales are used to "recoup costs" sounds to me like you're supporting his point again rather than contradicting it.
There are no methods for a game that work the same way. Under the GPL, you sell it to one person and they can give it to everyone else. That isn't going to make you any money. Advertising? They have the code, bye bye advertising display code. Software as a service (an MMO, which only works for one very specific type of game)? Hello, private servers, goodbye revenue.
The pack-in model, including other stuff beside the game, is silly as well. Why? Because you are increasing your production costs to only get above a $0 sale point. All it does is increase your costs, without providing a lot of real value to the end user. Packing a game nominally worth $30 at the market with cost-$5 tchotchkes and then charging $10 for it? Why the hell would any significant group buy it? The game is the product, not the tchotchkes. Selling those won't recoup your investment.
This concept is not bad for some areas. It obviously works for Linux, although the GPL has held back advancement by fucking over driver developers (RMS still says the nVidia driver behavior is against the GPL, it's only because everybody ignores the guy that they persist). I am saying it does not work for a lot of others, and that anti-copyright fake-freedom idiots and GPL zealots alike don't consider anyone else before going I WANT I WANT I WANT.
That sounds like your supporting his position rather than contradicting it. Why do photographers get favored rewards over sculptors or painters?
Most likely because they're more in demand. But the stuff that pirates are pirating is clearly in demand, they just don't want to pay for it.
Maybe single player games and movies are a special case. RMS avoided the question at the last talk I heard which leads me to believe he doesn't have a good answer.
From an economic perspective, I think it very much is. Even from a technical perspective, I think multiplayer games are (easier to cheat if you have the code, harder to catch you).
On the other hand people will still want to see movies and play games and be willing to pay for those games even copyright were changed so drastically.
I don't think they will. Because, frankly, people are fucking selfish bastards and will take what they can take for free. If it's not in front of them, they will never pay. Exceptions exist, but they are basically noise.
In the case of video games look at ToadyOne and DwarfFortress. He manages to develop DF full time off of donations.
Toady is also one guy, making a game that doesn't require a lot of technical expertise outside of code. I like Tarn a lot and I love DF, and I have donated, but I don't know if you've noticed, he isn't making much at all from his work. Enough to live on, yes--barely. Very barely.
Now expand that to a hundred or two hundred people. You're not getting very far.
If the donations were instead considered to be "investment in finishing the game" then you could see a smaller studio would be able to develop a game, even as grand as HL2, assuming they were "able to stand on the shoulders" of those who came before.
No, you really can't. Hint: the programming is not the largest part of making Half-Life 2. Unless you're positing that we see a bunch of recycled models in every game under the sun, you still have to pay for a legion of 3D modelers. Unless you're positing that we see a bunch of recycled textures in every game under the sun, you still have to pay for a bunch of texture artists. Unless you're positing that we hear the same sounds in every game under the sun, you have to pay for sound artists.
There's a lot more to a game than code. (And frankly, open source hasn't done a very good job of that: all the "big names" are derivatives of the originally closed-source Quake. If you want to see what you get for an open source engine, check out Sauerbraten. Try not to laugh.)
I don't disagree with a lot of what you say. I've donated to open source projects, both using my time and my money.
Regarding the entertainment industry, though? The money made is made because it's easier to just pay. (There's also the fact that most people can't have a movie theater in their house--similar stuff can't really be done with a video game.)
And I can think of plenty of open-source projects with a lot of users who don't get donations for their time and effort. Again, Warsow comes to mind.
Red Hat makes money off their services, not their product. If you think about it a bit, that's going to screw, say, game developers, unless you want everything to be MMOs (and even then, private servers will pop up, and then you're fucked).
I don't agree with your assertion at all, and I will accuse you of spreading self-righteous bullshit designed to minimize your own actions within your own head. But in any case, I wasn't talking about piracy to begin with. I was talking about the non-suitably to RMS's sick little pretend-free software to certain industries, such as video games. I dislike piracy, but I don't think it's an industry-killer unless, as your sibling poster rambled on about, it is taken to the extreme where they kill the goose laying the golden eggs. I think it's distasteful, wrong, and more than a little socially irresponsible, but I don't think it'll kill PC gaming. But, no, most people will not "happily" pay for something good. They begrudgingly pay, when they pay at all. Why else would piracy exist if not to avoid paying for that from which you derive benefit? Some people have an evolved moral conscience to consider it to be a like-trade-for-like, money for the utility (enjoyment) derived from the product. Those people I applaud. But do you know how I know it's utter horseshit? Because the overwhelming majority of open-source projects, even very good ones like Warsow, don't net donations enough to buy a steak dinner.
.
And on your little pro-piracy bit: I dislike piracy from a moral reason far more than a financial one. It is wrong to wrong me by not compensating me for the utility you receive from my work. The money isn't as important as the moral wrong being committed.
You can choose not to like copyright all you want. But it'll be here after we're both dead. The difference is that copyright affords me the chance to profit off my own creative ability and, in doing so, perhaps create something that will outlast me. Could I do so if it wasn't a method of making money? Sure. But the economic incentive encourages specialization of labor: if I can make money off creative work, I can specialize in it and get better at it, rather than splitting my work effort between survival work and creative work. Copyright turns both into the same thing. It improves society's creative arts, and piracy is a negative force on this.
Well, there's two ways to answer that.
The first, a moral argument that at the moment I don't have the patience to flesh out: Why do you _have_ to live from your job? Why is your probably-not-all-that-useful sort-of-contribution to society rewarded while theirs should not be?
The second, a practical one: many forms of modern art are simply too labor- and time-intensive to be done for free. Do you really think Half-Life 2 will be made "as a hobby in [somebody's] free time"? While some programming works can be done for free to the end user, they aren't free to the people making it. Linux would not exist as is if there weren't millions of dollars being funneled into it, and the methods of recouping that investment exist that don't involve direct sales of a product. Such doesn't exist for a lot of other methods that people find very valuable. Without copyright, we'll be introducing you to our old friend, the tragedy of the commons.
So, yes, I have no problem with criminalizing your fellow copyright infringers to protect my livelihood, and, quite frankly, I doubt even your fellow copyright infringers will have a problem with it when they realize that that's where the stuff they're passing around comes from. Taken to the extreme that you and your ilk think they would like, you would kill the goose laying the golden egg.