I've found myself unable to post comments after delivering this reply attacking RMS for being so hardline when it comes to open source. Don't get me wrong, I'm no M$ supporter, but I'd feel more comfortable about being a member of the open source community if someone such as ESR was the godhead.

To me, Stallman and his Free Software Foundation do nothing but scare away businesses interested in getting involved in the open source community. While Raymond's writings and Open Source Initiative have actually coerced (to use a harsh word, my thesaurus isn't available) businesses into the community, when was the last time that RMS or his FSF have accomplished that? Have they ever?

Perhaps using demented was a little too strong a word for describing RMS, but if he thinks his way will actually make things improve, there must be something wrong in his head. These days, too many things depend on business interests. By alienating them, he's only turning resources we need away from us.

To the person who modded my scathing reply down, please read these words, and understand the motive behind my comments. Because of you, I'm currently unable to post any.

Which brings me to my latest complaint. Even when you post as an Anonymous Coward, Slashdot still knows that it's you, as long as you're logged in. Which means that if you post against the established 'party line' (as I'll call it), CmdrTaco and his buddies can still come up and attack you for it, directly to your account. And even if you make AC posts only, if the moderators (the CIA, or perhaps more appropriately the KGB of Slashdot) keep modding those AC posts down, your account can still be affected, by things such as the temporary (if it is temporary) 'time-out', or by a complete and utter ban. Therefore, censorship is still imposed.

And why not, huh? Why not censor and ban all those with views different from the herd of Slashdot moderators and editors? After all, they might not support RMS! They could support (gasp) Eric S. Raymond! Or worse yet, Bill Gates! Such delinquents don't deserve to be on our happy Slashdot.org site!

Give me a break. That people can still be banned from posting, temporarily or otherwise, for posting things as anonymous cowards, is horrible! It just makes the people in charge here as bad as any tinpot dictator around the world.

This article from the Penny Arcade site has some pretty troubling news for all us game players and designers. Apperantly, games don't account for diddly squat as any sort of expression, and therefore "are not protected by the First Amendment". What's next to be squashed?

Here's what I posted to the IGDA forums:

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If you haven't read this already, read it now. This is something every designer, programmer, anyone and everyone involved in development of games, must read.

Apperantly, games don't account for diddly squat as any sort of expression, and therefore "are not protected by the First Amendment". This is the opinion of the "honorable" Judge Limbaugh, Chief Justice of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

Most games, other than puzzle and board games, are interactive stories. Even first person shooters filled to the guts with ultra-violence. There's even at least one genre that can't exist without some form of underlying story -- RPGs. If there's no story in an RPG, then it's absolutely worthless.

As someone who fancies himself a designer, I feel that Judge Limbaugh deserves to be beaten by a mob wielding rubber truncheons. He's dealt a serious blow to the game development community, and this is a personal insult to anyone who designs games for a living.

This Must Be Dealt With Severely. Games too are under attack by the people who want to strip you of your rights, your freedom to be human. Protest, vote, do whatever is nessesary to stop this evil.

Or who knows what will be next...

[Edit: Judge: County can limit access to video games -- Another article on this whole mess.]
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I'll be putting up more links as I can get them. Currently:

• Judge Limbaugh flips YOU off!
• 1st Amendment Troubles Ahead for Game Developers
• 1st Amendment Troubles Ahead for Game Developers
• Judge: County can limit access to video games

My participation with Mozilla, Meldstar Studios, a number of online communities (including Slashdot, Blaksoft.com, and others), and real life is dwindling down to nothing. I find myself less interested in most things every day.

I need to find a way to combat this problem. I need to write something!

Heh.

Well, Mozilla is at 0.9.8, I have net access at home for the first time since early January, and I'm actually getting somewhere on one of my Meldstar Studios projects. Home life is better, my (paid) work is going okay for all the jeopardy that it's in.

Things might finally be looking up for me.

Recently, I have been thinking about Mozilla becoming a seperate entity from Netscape and the whole AOLTW empire. With bug 111392, regarding donations to mozilla.org, I realized that some day, perhaps within the next year or so, this might happen. To that effect, bug 112583 has been filed, to help gather questions, comments, or anything that helps establish where the community stands on this.

If I'm not mistaken, precident for this can be drawn from OpenOffice.org, and may lead other open source projects controlled by corporations to assert themselves and carry their own head, not someone else's. Please, if you use Mozilla, show your support, for whichever side. Thank you. Added 18 Mar 2002: My bug is a dupe. Of bug 70249. Read it instead.

We're getting closer to the important Mozilla 1.0 release, but unfortunately I've been too busy as of late to help out. A real pisser, but considering how much I already have on my plate... Seriously, I've been sleeping 8 hours every other day recently.
I'd love to be able to get my workload lightened, that way I can fool with Mozilla some more.
Anyways, soon (hopefully) there will be Win32 special builds with the calendar built in. Here's hoping.

Well, the game development site that I've been working on, Blaksoft.com, is still not yet operational. However, I am allowing people to check it out at <http://www.blaksoft.com/index.php> (and a link to that will soon be on the "We're not up yet" page). I am also recruiting managers for the site out of my vast pool of IRC and IM contacts.

As for my Blog, it's just going to be personal stuff, while projects and all are here (and soon on Blaksoft.com's .planserv system, based on everyone's favorite .plan tracker Webdog.

Mozilla 0.9.6 should be here sometime this week. And guess what, I'm happy about it! Even with the oddness with the website icon code, and with the fighting over full-screen (which seems resolved now, but parties are still agitated), it's good to know that we can still keep ourselves from just pulling out all our hair and running away.

Other Mozilla users, NS users: Be thankful of all the crap people like me go through by testing this out for you, fixing your problems, etc.

Heh, this is the first time I've actually noticed the damn feature, hehe. I don't know why it's here, but oh well.

Those who know me know about Meldstar Studios and my game-site-under-development. And my RTS game project. Those who don't know me, read this and know now.

Blah.