Unlockable content is restricted to players who have made certain progress in-game. This is not free as in freedom. If a free, open-source game features unlockable content, is it unethical? Is it infringing on muh freedom?
>>1
There should not be any problem as long as the user has the right to modify the program running on their own computer. For a person who is running a client to an Internet game, the user doesn't rely on the game to do anything useful. RMS would not use the term 'content' to refer to works of artistic authorship used in a game.
>>6
Are you the shithead who is spamming /prog/ with off topic threads? Go back to /b/ please.
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I am a Programmer2013-05-02 22:34
I Program (not code), I write Programs (not ``apps"), I do Programming (not coding), I am a Programmer (not coder).
>>9
I've never even made a thread on /prog/. You guys make enough off topic threads for me to shitpost in on your own.
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Anonymous2013-05-02 23:27
``Unlockable'' as in ``you have to beat this part of the game'' or as in ``you have to pay the developers.'' If it's the first, that's the way most games are. Unlocking levels and items is part of the fun, and bypassing that is considered cheating. If it's the second, that wouldn't be possible unless the paid version is non-free.
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Anonymous2013-05-02 23:45
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What >>5 is referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
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Anonymous2013-05-03 1:06
>>13
What if >>5 is a Linux programmer who sells devices that uses no GNU software?
>>17
egin /g/ro godwottery genrostus grotato egin LLLLEEEEELLLL XDDDSDDSSDDD
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Anonymous2013-05-03 8:25
eggwing
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Anonymous2013-05-03 9:29
>>1 Unlockable content is restricted to players who have made certain progress in-game. This is not free as in freedom.
This kind of blocking is a feature designed to make the user experience more rewarding. Contrast with digital restrictions management systems which are anti-features.
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Anonymous2013-05-03 20:08
Dunno. But Marvin Minsky once said, that video games are a good way to confuse and distract people from real problems.
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Anonymous2013-05-03 21:13
>>21
Minsky is a joke and everything he says about AI and the brain and consciousness is all wrong.
dumb senile old man
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Anonymous2013-05-03 21:25
>>22
How can you say that about the teacher of Sussman, who is second only to McCarthy?
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Anonymous2013-05-03 21:27
>>23
Because I am not a conformist and hate lisp (C and Haskell are the two God languages).
>>22
I believe Minsky is like Carl Sagan and Yakov Perelman: while his contributions to the field doesn't look important at the first glance, Minsky helped popularizing the the idea of AI, making it cool and hip.
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Anonymous2013-05-04 3:25
>>24 Because I am not a conformist and hate lisp (C and Haskell are the two God languages).
>I am not a conformist
>C and Haskell
Oh lordy.
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Anonymous2013-05-04 3:36
>>27
They have proved themselves to be the best programming languages around.
1. Works of function. These carry out a specific task or assist in carrying out a task. e.g. a spreadsheet program or a book of recipes. rms believes these should be free under the four freedoms that GPL provides: the freedoms to use for any purpose, to study and modify, to copy and redistribute, and to modify and distribute.
2. Works of personal facts or opinions. i.e. a biography or editorial. rms believes that modification of these documents could be construed as anything from misrepresentation to censorship and contribute no benefit to society, so redistribution of modifications of these works should be disallowed for all time.
3. Works of art. rms believes that artistic intent is important and that it's important to artists. However, he's noticed that once a profitable work of art is no longer profitable, the artist is more than willing to sale their copyrights to Hollywood, who care nothing of their artistic intent. He's also noticed that most artists rarely have an opportunity to sell their rights to Hollywood. Therefore, he believes that these works should be protected from modification for anywhere between 5 and 15 years from the publication of the work.
Video games probably fall under #3.
However, a proprietary game running on a computer is capable of being as malicious as any other piece of software, so the source must still be open for study whether or not protection from modification is provided by law.
>>29
Lambdas are retarded. Learn x86 and just use calculated jumps.
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Anonymous2013-05-04 9:53
>>30 However, a proprietary game running on a computer is capable of being as malicious as any other piece of software, so the source must still be open for study whether or not protection from modification is provided by law.
How do you implement anti-cheating, without security-by-obscurity?
Moreover, most games include 3rd party code, like xbox360 sdk, which couldn't be made open - i.e. company profits exactly by selling the code.
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Anonymous2013-05-04 9:56
>>30 Works of personal facts or opinions. i.e. a biography or editorial. rms believes that modification of these documents could be construed as anything from misrepresentation to censorship and contribute no benefit to society, so redistribution of modifications of these works should be disallowed for all time.
How am I supposed to use ">implying" then?
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Anonymous2013-05-04 10:16
>>32
Anti-cheating on a single player game is useless, the player should be able to choose the rules on their own computer. On networked games, the server should be controlling the game logic and the clients should not be processing the game mechanics. Anti-cheating should be done on the server, not the client.
Profit is not an excuse for promoting proprietary software. These promoters should not be in business if they are in the business of restricting society's freedom.
>>33 implying that you'd misrepresent a whole document using implications
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Anonymous2013-05-04 10:36
>>34 clients should not be processing the game mechanics.
Clients still hold geometry, including unseen one. More over, modifying client allows various automations - aim bots or automatic build queues in games like Starcraft, making game a bot heaven, so a human player without coding skills would have no chance.
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Anonymous2013-05-04 12:55
>>35 Clients still hold geometry, including unseen one.
The server shall perform occlusion. For instance, if an enemy is moving hidden from the sight of a client, the server shall not send that information to said client.
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Anonymous2013-05-04 13:01
>>36
There is no way to do occlusion outside of graphics pipeline. In complex scenes, with global illumination, removal of on object (which for example occludes sunlight), even on the opposite side of map, can radically change scene lighting.
>>38
Wow! Now we see it: Stallman tries to force software into cloud computing, with a single monopolist provider, where an unapproved user wont be able to purchase personal CPU at all. Welcome back to 80ies timesharing!
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Anonymous2013-05-04 13:21
>>38
The ultimate solution. The client sends key presses and mouse movements while the server sends a stream of video and audio. I bet it could work with some compression. Like the server doesn't need to actually transfer the audio file, just the sound event, with right left balancing and pitch shift. And it could just transmit the locations of entities visible to the player, while keeping the level itself static. Maybe transmit the lighting effects on visible walls.
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Anonymous2013-05-04 14:08
>>40
Or you could have a graphic display server listening on your local machine, and the game client could send the AV stream to it. Let's call it X12.
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Anonymous2013-05-04 14:37
>>32 How do you implement anti-cheating, without security-by-obscurity?
rms likes to say that the best way to shut someone up is to kill them, but that doesn't mean you should be allowed to kill them.
Taking away someone's freedom is even worse. People cheating at video games is not something that justifies taking their freedom when most of them weren't going to cheat anyway. It's like the Blu-Ray paradox: if you buy a BRD and play it in an approved player, you're forced to sit through a PSA about how evil and illegal sharing is, while the people who share don't have to sit through it.
Besides, people can cheat at video games without the source code, either by modifying the binaries or their memory while the game is running. It's perfectly legal to buy a ``gameshark'' for this purpose.
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Anonymous2013-05-04 14:42
If a FOSS game had unlockable content, it wouldn't infringe on freedom because you could modify the source code to give you the content immediately.
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Anonymous2013-05-04 14:52
You can think of bitcoin mining as a MMOG with unlockable content, albiet a very boring one. The client is free, so there's nothing stopping you from changing the rules by which it operates to work in your favor, and if you distributed your modified client to enough people who are willing to run it those changes could take effect, yet it doesn't seem to be an epidemic does it? If bitcoin can work as intended while still respecting the user's freedom, why can't your MMOG?