That's what I meant -- rendering engine. In Ogre3D, input handling is practically bundled (OIS). AI is not and can not be universal; that piece of the puzzle is definitely game code, not engine code. Audio is easily integrated.

It may not be a complete solution, but for rendering (which is one of the hardest pieces of the puzzle) it's surely good.

Looks like market for selling engines off-the-shelf is generally badly hit over the last few years. You can get a quality engine (and SDK!) for free, and you only buy extras. Engines and SDKs that I know of and that are free, or require payment for commercial development or upon release: Unity3D, Unreal, now CryEngine. Not to mention Ogre3D and other open-source engines (without editors, though).

To keep posts short and to the point.

Thanks!

I'm curious what's the problem with Speex for voice transmission? (A non-rhetorical question.)

Who gave them that?

Are you saying that Israel is the problem? I am not that actively tracking the status in the region, but they never seemed like a major troublemaker to me. If they are, what is the logic in destroying everyone around them?

Russia is not half-way around the world.

I'm afraid I do not understand how all this justifies entering the conflict in Libya. If Gaddafi was mad enough to openly attack Israel, he had over 40 years to do so. I'm also not sure that bringing US' "sons of bitches" into power to replace one who was previously US "son of a bitch" is the solution. You should observe problems in political transition of countries from socialism to capitalism. Even worse scum comes to power.

There's an insightful campaign slogan for local elections in one small town in Croatia: "Vote for us; we already stole what we wanted." If other people come into power, you have no idea who you'll be dealing with.

It is interesting that in less than a month since the first uprisings, a rebel "government" has been organized in Libya. It has already organized a "central bank" (with what money?) and secured oil export contracts, not to mention armed itself. Hmm.

Who is trigger happy here?

Everything always must come down to Israel, doesn't it? This seems like an ironic twist on the Godwin's Law.

United States is on the other side of the world compared to the Middle East. It is not directly threatened. Israel does not seem like a natural ally. United States is not threatened militarily and it's not really threatened by the Middle Eastern countries at all, and should not look at small countries as its allies. United States should feel much more threatened by the China.

Government of the Gitmo Nation West should more closely try to end the dependence on the Chinese products and the Chinese market, work on economic ties with the rest of the world, kickstart manufacturing and science, and overall regain its economic and cultural strength. Gunning everyone that dares to oppose the "world's last standing superpower" and its wishes is not a solution.

And it will bring neither stability nor democracy. Instead, United States are for the last decade turning into the very monster whose creation they are trying to prevent.

Which, even despite I'm in one of the attacked countries, does not make me happy.

Rather odd way at looking at things. Denying defensive weaponry and other things to build up a resistance surely is an effective way to resolve a conflict. Because then it cannot even be called a conflict; if there's only one properly armed side, how can you call it a conflict?

If you however think there is someone who is defending himself, and has a right to defend himself, just help or don't interfere. Imposing a weapon import embargo on a state that cannot defend itself means its citizens will be "dealt with" by the other side.

When comparing things to the other wars, people seem to miss one important thing: insurgents in Libya have insisted that there is, really, no division among Libyans. In that way, the situation is unlike the one in Yugoslavia: supporters of Gaddafi are "artificially" separated from insurgents. Not by difference of tradition, difference of language, difference of customs, but by their opinions of the current leader. Is there a religious difference, as in Iraq? What are their differences?

Why not attempt a diplomatic solution? Why not first just threaten Gaddafi to deploy troops, and demand negotiations and observers? Perhaps I did not track the events enough, but I don't remember anyone making such demands. It was immediately "They're suppressing a rebellion, lets attack them".

Nobody went into Libya to prevent a conflict, but to encourage one. If lives were all the world worried about, they would have let Gaddafi go when he wanted to take the money and run, instead of telling him "no".

That's just speculation. What's your evidence?

Why put the money into DoD at all?

Violating sovereignty of another nation state (even the one led by an unstable dictator) is in the interest of the world's "pinnacle of freedom and democracy"? Taking sides in an internal conflict is right and justified? I don't remember the United States being so proactive during the war in my homeland. In fact, I remember certain embargoes while we were attacked. It must be just my memory.

For some reason, my logic must be screwed up as well, since I don't see anyone talking about bringing down the regime of Kazakhstan, where Nursultan Nazarbayev won with alleged support of 95% of citizens. Which is quite an ordinary thing after 20 years of rule, right? What about Sudan, Yemen? Oh, let's not forget the Democratic Republic of Kampuchea and its leaders, who, after they lost power, were supported by China and the United States.

It seems I'm a pretty much messed up person, for opposing the senseless war. Since you worry about universal healthcare and education, you are probably a pretty messed up person yourself. Since of course the "security", "stability" and "spread of democracy" are a priority, right?

I have no idea, since English is not my primary language. What do you think it means?

Libya is engagement in conflict, not a prevention of conflict. Prove me otherwise.

While developing the software, developers at least consumed food. Hence they needed to ensure funding for the food. Despite that I have, in effect, implied organization as necessary, I intended to say that nothing is unpaid for.

I release stuff as free software. I label it as such (not as open source). At the same time, I don't expect to make a living off of that software.

I don't have software-unrelated skills. I don't want to do unskilled labor. What can I do? I can write software for living.

I want to make people happy. What kind of software I can write? End-user software. How do I make money off of that? By selling it. How do I tell people that I'd appreciate their money? Well, by asking for it. How does libre software fit into all this? It doesn't really -- it's a hobby of mine.

People working on Unix were employed at Bell Labs. Which turned it into a big commercial thing. Linus Torvalds was a student when he began writing the kernel. Linux and GNU contributors were primarily hobbyists with obviously other source of income, paying for development instead of users. Alternatively, they were employees of enthusiastic companies (or those that needed to satisfy a market) and *gasp* they were making money off of it! Apache started off as a fork of NCSA httpd, did it not?

Do you think Linux would kick off if it weren't zero-cost to redistribute, aside from being libre? Do you think Apache would, when NCSA's httpd was zero-cost?

I apologize for not making a distinction between self-hosted web-based blogging service and a blogging tool for interaction with remote services, but with integration of the local desktop environment.

Sometimes it's hard to make a distinction.

I'm always looking for ways to be supportive of FSF's stances, but they are a puritan organization. As such, they present views that they know won't gain mainstream acceptance but that's ok, since something more reasonable will gain it. And that's where I stand: I don't consider words of FSF to be holy, but I will support a more "secular" view.

Same here. It's unreasonable to consider an offering "libre" to be truly possible without being fully "unpaid". Not because they are linguistically indistinct concepts, but because they are not to be expected. Licensing schemes, as they exist today for end users, typically allow software that costs thousands to develop (if not monetary, then in food) to be available for lower prices. "Splitting the cost."

Software needs funding before it exists. It's unreasonable to offer people a "donation jar" to fund software that doesn't exist yet and is unproven. Rare examples of success are not always truly success. Most software is funded a-priori in good faith that somehow one can pay it back. How? By selling a-posteriori. Selling software that must be freely copyable by the recipient is possible, and explicitly supported by FSF, this is rarely feasible nowadays if developing software is your primary work in life. This is because you will rarely have the success of Blender in order to sell other merchandise. A lot of work done under free software platforms is done by volunteers, but a lot of highest quality work is done by companies that have other means of earning money. It's really hard to get quality software written fast when it's not your primary thing in life and with free software, it's hard to make it a primary thing. And if you can't think of writing free software as of a profession because you don't have the financial backing to write free software, FSF bluntly says you shouldn't think of it as your profession. I can't dig it out right now, but it's either somewhere on FSF's site, on GNU site, or on Stallman.org.

It's easy to pretend "libre" isn't followed by "unpaid". It's also easy to see that it's just a pretense. Let's hope that FSF's list of high priority projects does prove me wrong, that you indeed can stick out a donation jar and expect the money to flow a-priori. Because then I will indeed dedicate myself to working on tons of free software projects that I've either started already, or just wanted to work on. I want to work on a good blogging tool for GNU/Linux and Mac. Can I get a-priori funding for that? Or is it easier to dismiss pride and ideals and just sell on the Mac App Store, not opening the source since something like this might happen?