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tcpipI have two presentations in coming weeks which I have to prepare for. One is October 8 at the Unitarian Church, on "The Age of Spiritual Machines", derived from Ray Kurzweil's book of the same title and the preceeding "Age of Intelligent Machines". The other is October 12 at the Australian Unix Users Group annual conference on "The Economics of Open Source". Have also wriiten a review for Ticonderoga on a re-release of Phillip K. Dick's "The Cosmic Puppets". Needless to say, it shines with the same brilliance it did the last time I read it (which was about fifteen years ago).
Three gaming sessions this week. On Friday was![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zen_cat's In Nomine game and briefly met pache. We managed to get a copy of the evil soul-sucking MMORP, delete the offending code and release it as OSS. Unfortunately one angel had gone rogue and destroyed the software company building (along with several people). Had to outsource a young hacker to a outdoor raver commune after he saw some in angelic form. Kept on muttering about aliens. Overall a victory for the forces of light. On Sunday was the RetroAD&D Norman Britain game, using the U3 (The Final Enemy) module. An underwater adventure, we defeated the barracks of the Saughighan (hmm, very like Call of Cthulhu Deep Ones) and destroyed their temple. Game ended on a nail-biter following as the lair began to collapse around us following the temple incident. On Tuesday played DragonQuest which really is quite brilliant for a game 26 years old. We are fortunate to have a GM who has all the old classic modules and we're hoping to combine it with the Barbarian King's wargame, also published by SPI. To finish off, this Saturday will be attending Unicon.
Other socialable occassions of late included a housewarming party for Paula and Craig wherecaseopaya and I spent time with the delightful log_reloaded and I chatted with one Geoff S., a character I've known for about twenty years and whom enters my life every two-three years. Sunday night was a birthday dinner for imajica__lj at the Xanghai. Monday night was obscure drinks at the European Beer Cafe with severina_242 and _zombiemonkey followed by an excellent dinner at the "well-known to a small group" Waiter's Club.
Energy. Why not solar? Warmimg. Greenland's Ice Melt Grew by 250 Percent, Satellites Show. Shrinking species. Polar Bears aren't too happy about this. Payback? Virgin pledges $3bn to combat global warming. Currently my brain is struggling with economics of water. Liquid land is a hard one. Assistance requested, especially on the supply side. Demand side is relatively easy.
Three gaming sessions this week. On Friday was
zen_cat's In Nomine game and briefly met pache. We managed to get a copy of the evil soul-sucking MMORP, delete the offending code and release it as OSS. Unfortunately one angel had gone rogue and destroyed the software company building (along with several people). Had to outsource a young hacker to a outdoor raver commune after he saw some in angelic form. Kept on muttering about aliens. Overall a victory for the forces of light. On Sunday was the RetroAD&D Norman Britain game, using the U3 (The Final Enemy) module. An underwater adventure, we defeated the barracks of the Saughighan (hmm, very like Call of Cthulhu Deep Ones) and destroyed their temple. Game ended on a nail-biter following as the lair began to collapse around us following the temple incident. On Tuesday played DragonQuest which really is quite brilliant for a game 26 years old. We are fortunate to have a GM who has all the old classic modules and we're hoping to combine it with the Barbarian King's wargame, also published by SPI. To finish off, this Saturday will be attending Unicon.Other socialable occassions of late included a housewarming party for Paula and Craig where
caseopaya and I spent time with the delightful log_reloaded and I chatted with one Geoff S., a character I've known for about twenty years and whom enters my life every two-three years. Sunday night was a birthday dinner for imajica__lj at the Xanghai. Monday night was obscure drinks at the European Beer Cafe with severina_242 and _zombiemonkey followed by an excellent dinner at the "well-known to a small group" Waiter's Club.Energy. Why not solar? Warmimg. Greenland's Ice Melt Grew by 250 Percent, Satellites Show. Shrinking species. Polar Bears aren't too happy about this. Payback? Virgin pledges $3bn to combat global warming. Currently my brain is struggling with economics of water. Liquid land is a hard one. Assistance requested, especially on the supply side. Demand side is relatively easy.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 04:58 am (UTC)Good to see that the old titles are getting an airing. Now if you had played Arduin or Tunnels & Troll I would've had a chuckle. Anyone still play C&S to your knowledge?
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Date: 2006-09-27 05:04 am (UTC)*nods* Similar skill modifiers is something they never really dealt with. But hey, at least DQ had skills in the first place!
Last night I was noticing the Strength modifiers for rats (PS 4-6, compared to a housecat's 2-3) were still wrong after three editions. Ditto for the damage of a weasel's bite (d+4, same as a heavy crossbow... I think they meant d-4)
Anyone still play C&S to your knowledge?
They did a new release a couple of years ago, but I don't know anyone who plays it.
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Date: 2006-09-27 05:35 am (UTC)What was the companion SF game that SPI had out at the same time; was it Universe, or something like that? Do you know if the system was similar to DQ? I always saw it on the shelves but I never played it.
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Date: 2006-09-27 05:40 am (UTC)Yeah, it was Universe. I have a copy of that tucked away somewhere as well. IIRC it was fairly similar to DQ, and had quite a reasonable occupation system, along with some good gravity effects for homeworld vs current environs and "generic" creatures.
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Date: 2006-09-27 06:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 06:16 am (UTC)Don't get me started on fish shortages...
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Date: 2006-09-27 07:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 10:45 pm (UTC)Odd. The Age seems to have changed the reference link. Try it here:
http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2006/09/25/1159036469469.html
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Date: 2006-09-27 10:40 am (UTC)I'm not sure I think DragonQuest was that good. Some interesting ideas, some dodgy mechanics, IIRC.
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Date: 2006-09-27 10:55 pm (UTC)Blade of Alectus, The Enchanted Wood, Palace of Ontocle... There's also a dual AD&D/DQ module The Shattered Statue which looks pretty good... and two good Judges Guild modules The Magebird Quest and Starsilver Trek... But no doubt, The Enchanted Wood was the best...
You're quite right to say that some of the mechanics were a bid dodgy (e.g., making a luck roll to see if you could play a particular race), others just far too crunchy (e.g., some combat maneuvers), and some just didn't scale properly (e.g., grevious injuries vs superlarge creatures). The focus on spells and weapons as individual skills whilst other professions were grouped skills was unfortunate. I would have liked to have seen the various colleges become "professions" and for a variety of warrior-type professional packages.
Still... We're having a ball and I'm looking forward to developing the Barbarian King's world... I reckon Greg Costiyan will approve..
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Date: 2006-09-27 10:54 am (UTC)As far as it goes, I've only really seen these arguments so far:
(1) It's great for achieving end goals if money's not an issue/no longer relevant. You're a Netscape or a Sun Microsystems and want to destroy Microsoft's market? Go OSS. You're an nVidia or a ATI and can't be arsed maintaining driver code? Go OSS.
(2) You can sell tech support for your own software. (Of course, if your interface and documentation are good, your market for tech support will be small.)
(3) You can use your software hacking to demonstrate your skills to potential employers and clients. (Except that unless they're techs themselves, it'll be hard for them to confirm which bits you did... unless you're the project's only, #1 or #2 contributor.)
(4) You can trust customers to purchase your OSS software, as many will do the right thing. (In the Shareware world, they've run the experiments: unrestricted Shareware gets registered 1/8th as often as time restricted Shareware.)
(5) You can sell tech support for other peoples OSS projects. By far the most convincing. There's definitely money in it, but, that's more a job not a successful business. Does anyone want to be providing tech support for buggy and incomplete code for the rest of their life?
(6) Paying forward. It's the BSD license way more than the GPL way. For the corporate, it means they can reuse code, while still having the potential to make decent commercial software sales to end-users so developers can pay their mortgages and play with OSS in their spare time. They can also release toolkit code to the world in a way which disclaims responsibility for it.
Feel free to use any of the above in your presentation. Don't quote me though ;-). Do send me a link to your presentation if you put it online.
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Date: 2006-09-27 10:59 pm (UTC)Ahh, you're talking the commerce of open-source, whilst I'll be talking about the economics. I actually expect that more than a few people will be coming along with that assumption.. Indeed, it gives me a bit of a lead into the presentation, making the disciplinary distinction. I'll probably will spend a couple of paragraphs on the issues that you raise.
My main interest is how does open source effect productivity for an economy as a whole..
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Date: 2006-09-28 12:30 am (UTC)Australia was in a position to be a net exporter (highly tech literate workforce), until IT/Comms policy neglect by Alston et al and lack of govt willingness to even consider Australian made in procurement. Then along came the FTA with US style software patents, etc.
The Australian IT industry hobbles forward, despite government intervention not because of it.
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Date: 2006-09-28 12:39 am (UTC)I may have to dig out my copy of the Goldworthy Report from the mid-nineties which talked about Australia as an IT producing nation. Not much followed on from that :/
The Australian IT industry hobbles forward, despite government intervention not because of it.
Indeed. The South Koreans are eating everyone alive.
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Date: 2006-09-27 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 11:05 pm (UTC)Yeah, comments have been disabled as their moving to the website. I can't spot the ej-jay rss feed however...
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Date: 2006-09-27 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-28 12:29 am (UTC)Yeah, except the first post is to say that it's not being used anymore and that the lj is for archive purposes only.
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Date: 2006-09-28 01:45 am (UTC)damnation!
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Date: 2006-09-27 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 11:07 pm (UTC)My interests are varied and sometimes marginal :)
always delightful to be further convinved that there is no way out
Ahh, the wisdom on impending doom!
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Date: 2006-09-27 10:00 pm (UTC)We live on solar power, collect our own water and are responsible for our own grey water and wastes...if we can help you at all please let me know.
Can you pass a hug onto
(-:
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Date: 2006-09-27 10:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-28 10:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-28 10:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 10:33 pm (UTC)Well hello...
We live on solar power, collect our own water and are responsible for our own grey water and wastes...if we can help you at all please let me know.
Can you knock some sense into the Prime Minister? ;-)
Can you pass a hug onto [info]caseopaya from me please?
With pleasure!
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Date: 2006-09-28 10:10 pm (UTC)I'd give it a try if I ever got within arms reach! lol.
Thank you (-:
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Date: 2006-09-28 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-28 04:37 am (UTC)... and we must visit the other Glenn as well!
Hmmm... A country trip is beckoning..
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Date: 2006-09-28 04:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-28 05:02 am (UTC)I know that! Saturday week to visit Glen and
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Date: 2006-09-28 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-28 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 10:06 pm (UTC)There was a rather cool solar concept I recall reading about, I think in Jerry Pournelle's A Step Further Out. Effectively, have the solar arrays in orbit, where there's no atmospheric interference, and beam the resultant power down via microwave. With an antenna grid about 2m above the ground (IIRC) the expected ground level radaiation was low enough to graze cattle underneath with no ill effects. Seemed an interesting idea to me.
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Date: 2006-09-27 11:14 pm (UTC)As with most forms of energy generation/collection it depends on what you want to do with it. Power density with solar is pretty poor. And it produces DC (conversion is about another 10% loss). On the other side of the equation it's damn good for heat energy (well, there's a surprise). And your are absolutely spot on about the need for a stressed grid; properly managed, solar has a very low distribution loss.
Of all places in the world Australia should be a leader in this technology. We're not short of sun.
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Date: 2006-09-27 11:26 pm (UTC)As far as the energy required/pollution generated equation, that's all from what I read about 5-6 years ago, so it may no longer be accurate. I was real serious about outfitting our house in SF with solar, but the payback period was about 7 years, and I didn't think we'd be there long enough (and I was right). So while I was keen as, I opted against it for financial reasons (and very clearly made the wise choice in hindsight).
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Date: 2006-09-28 11:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-29 02:15 am (UTC)Who's Fabio and why is that relevant?
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Date: 2006-10-01 01:02 am (UTC)And in reply to the 2nd part, it ain't. :)
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Date: 2006-10-04 11:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-05 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-04 11:36 am (UTC)