(no subject)

[garote]

Yes, frankly, I don't know what to do about this. The only completely renewable method we have for carbon-fixing on a massive scale is the planting of vegetation. But you would essentially need a near-soulless global police force to prevent, for example, the entire continent of Asia from chopping trees in the winter, and burning coal to cook their food.

Instead, I get the creeping suspicion that our generation - yours and mine - is going to bear witness to an absolutely unfathomable amount of human death and misery. We will fry, drown, and starve off this planet until our numbers become harmless again.

Mostly starve.

Comments

well, fuck

[shutupassbutt.livejournal.com]

so much for happy retirement

[graue.livejournal.com]

You write closed-source software for a living.

Don't you think more _free_ information is the survivors' best hope to rebuild after this happens?

[garote]

That's got to be the weirdest attempt at an accusation I've heard in a long time. :D

[graue.livejournal.com]

It's not intended as an accusation, or weird, for that matter. Don't you think all your and your coworkers' effort will likely be lost? Whereas, if spread widely enough, it might survive and would be less for future civilization to do over, don't you think?

Maybe the code you personally write is not that valuable, like making the little balloons pop up or whatever. I don't know what exactly you do. But can you see why keeping so many secrets on so many things isn't the best idea?

[garote]

First of all, my effort is already paying dividends. The things we've deployed serve their purposes just fine without a set of blueprints tacked onto them.

Second, you're asking that question to the wrong person. The name of the department I work in should be enough to inform you that the code I develop is used by every single app - 'open source' or no - that runs on OS X.

Third, if you're trying to make a point based on market-share comparisons with other OSes, your point is not so much insightful as it is disrespectful. Would you walk up to Neil Gaiman and say that his life's work is misguided because Garfield is more likely to survive an apocalypse?

[graue.livejournal.com]

Yes, the things you've deployed serve their purposes. That's true. They become less useful over time, though, as technology changes, whereas some of the ideas used in making those things could stay useful forever.

I don't know the name of the department you work in. If you said it here on LiveJournal, I missed it, sorry. You seem to be implying that the code you develop is open source, in which case, I didn't realize that and yeah, I guess I am asking the wrong person.

I didn't intend any market-share comparison, just that open source code tends to be copied by many people in many places around the world, whereas most of Apple's code is presumably kept on developers' machines and their private network. So the ideas contained in it are less likely to survive.

[garote]

You seem to think that distributing source code for free is somehow a means of defeating entropy. But whether source code is free or not, the binary it builds will become less and less useful as long as the computer industry (and it's relationship with others) continues to evolve. Fixing the code to build the binary to roll with the changes requires time and effort. In the case of Apple's applications and most parts of its operating system, the incentive to invest that time and effort would be damaged by making the source code freely distributable. Who cares if the source code to OS X gets picked up by even ten million hobbyists around the world, if the consequence of that is the loss of livelihood of all the specialists, experts, and hackers within walking distance of each other inside Apple who are able to devote 50 hours a week, every week, exclusively to the development of OS X, with all the connections, resources, and influence of a multi-billion dollar corporation at their disposal? The incentive to maintain software is not magically spun from thin air, and dismantling that incentive for Apple in exchange for the hope that a similar incentive would form elsewhere is just plain stupid. At best, innovation of OS X would drag to a halt, and it would take on the ragged, patchwork character that all non-corporate Linux distros have. If that's the price of "immortality" then no thank you.

If think that open-sourcing all of OS X and its applications wouldn't harm Apple, then you need to do some investigation on your own; I'm presently not interested in explaining it to you.

(from dmp:)

[(Anonymous)]

Stop trying to justify your life with an elaborate web of lies and propoganda... you're a sellout, corporate whore and you deserve to get cancer. Working for a corporation that sells closed-source software and DRM technology makes you worse then Hitler.

Sorry, couldn't resist. ;-)

[garote]

ROFL

Nicely said, comrade :D

twinkie salesman

[shutupassbutt.livejournal.com]

The esteemed Mr. Garote,

The album you have requested is now available! You may pick up your order here (http://robo-nupu.frontal-lobe.net/).

Thank you for your continued patronage!

-Sir Shpladimus Doinkatron

Re: twinkie salesman

[garote]

1. The Morning Routine - Hard to tolerate except for the explosions. Good work with those.
2. Road Rage - Soooooooooooo chronotrigger+mario! This is a jam if I ever heard one.
3. This is Robo-Nupu - MY BRAIN, WIHT THE HURTING you and us need to get together and jam
5. At the Chapel, Ready for Action - Actually rather listenable
6. Agony of the Underwater - Mario Kart FTW :)
9. Kupicabra in Taco Hell - Well done :) I like this one a lot. You could do a whole album of this alone.
10. After the Chapel, Ready for Cake - I'd love to see what you guys can pull with a bunch of stolen beats on top of this... "gimme a beat, sammmmmm"
12. Klaxonoids - "That is the gayest alarm ever:" This really got me. BEST LINE EVER: what the BALLS? Engineer with the page-turning SFX: Awesome. ... This whole thing is fucking priceless. YOU WIN. Seriously. Well done.

Re: twinkie salesman

[shutupassbutt.livejournal.com]

hahaha a BDM-Robo-Nupu jam would be epic

and thanks, we're glad you got a kick out of it ^__^

[conflictdswitch.livejournal.com]

I think that, with so many people frying and drowning, not so many people will starve. Can you say Soylent Green? 8)

[garote]

ooo-eeerr! I hadn't thought of that!

good point :D