Jeff, I'm tempted to say "If you have to ask, chances are you're not going to get it", because it feels like there is some fundamental disconnect between us.

I mean, there are loads of stuff I do that I'll never get payed for. I'm "lobbying" to get Indie rpgs into local gaming stores. Other people spend hours writing fanfiction. None of us are payed for that, but we do it because it's fun for us.

So the idea that just because it has no commercial application nobody will do it seems ... weird to me. Look out there, all over the world (and internet) people are doing stuff for free, because they enjoy it and get stuff other then money out of it. (recognition, satisfaction, ...)

Like I said, I think there's a fundamental disconnect there, somewhere. You don't get why people do it and I don't get what's so hard to get there. ^_^

#3: I think the pdfs not even up yet. I sent my pdf version to Cory but I actually assume that somebody else has done so before and it will be put up in time. For those who want a pdf before that happens, you can find my version also here.

Have fun!

If I rewrite a book as, for exaple, a movie script, or a play, or a comic, then thats a Re-mix too.

As for your specific example, I'm pretty sure that Cory wouldn't see that as rude, quite to the contrary he'd probably be happy about it.

But if YOU think it's rude, then, well, don't do it, you know? ^_^

@17: Personally, I think with the new edition coming up you have to separate two things: The criticism of the actual game and the criticism of the proposed licensing.

The people hesitant to switch are in the "criticism of the game" camp, whether they don't like what they've heard so far, think they already have enough 3.5 material that they don't need a new system, whatever.

The other camp, though, is what is talked about here or at the earlier "paranoia bandwagon", and that's IMO something that's much more important and much more relevant to the gaming hobby as a whole, so "paranoia" (Personally, I'd say "healthy skepticism" in most cases.) is much more called for.

After all, if the game sucks and (some) people don't play it, whoopdedoo, whatever. Doesn't really matter all that much to the hobby in general. (Although I have a hard time believing that, both because it's D&D, the gorilla-in-the-gaming-room and because it's WotC/Hasbro, the company with the biggest marketing budget in the hobby. Not to mention that much of what I've heard sounds pretty cool.)

But the licensing, that's important because it can have a huge influence on what the hobby in general looks like. Looking back at the d20 "bubble", the original dedication to "open gaming" changed the hobby immensely, both negatively (By flooding the market by huge amounts of badly produced and written supplements.) and positively. (By giving many new designers the chance to tap into the gaming market with an established property to use and play with, thus creating many new companies or giving existing ones new chances. It also gave us one of the most-used open license for gaming system that many independent systems use now.)

So whichever way you swing as far as D&D-the-game is concerned (I'm not a D&D player myself.), what WotC decide to do with their license is something that can potentially make big waves, both positively and negatively, for the hobby in general. So the massive reaction to the original "poison pill" situation is, IMO, at the very least understandable.

"There will also be a new Open Gaming License that will presumably be much less restrictive to allow for variations on the theme."

Ehm, you got a source for that? Because from what I've read so far (Which might be lacking, I haven't been following things THAT closely.) they explicitly said that there will not be a new Open Gaming License and that, at most, we'll get a different version of the GSL that allows non-fantasy material, à la d20 Modern, but that will presumably be just as limited and revocable as the fantasy GSL.

So far, I have heard nothing about them bringing us a new OGL and everything about them explicitly abandoning the idea of open gaming in favor of a "royalty-free license" they can revoke "to protect their IP".

What Rich said. It's been a while and we want our weird porn!!! ^_^

Wow, reading some of the later comments in the Lifejournal is really, really depressing. Like, everything that's wrong with the internet, compressed into a 1000+ posts.

And it tanked an IMO very interesting idea, what a shame.

"Honor payment systems are good hearted ideas, but they do not work in the real world, people like free stuff."

Huh, somebody better tell the Deewan here in Vienna, which has been operating on a "all you can eat, pay as much as you want" basis for ... dunno, at least a couple of years now? I'm sure they'd appreciate the information.

This might be a stupid question, but I'm not from the US and haven't followed this too closely, but why do private businesses have access to the government list of terror suspects?

I mean, ok, the list of terror suspect itself is a stupid idea, but "at worst", it would make the government itself do stupid things. But how can it be that a private firm like a CAR DEALERSHIP gets to (Or has to?) check their customers against this list? Especially when, from what I've heard, that list is not publicly available? So why can a car dealership check whether their customer is a potential terrorist, but that customer couldn't check whether he is on the list?

The really sucky thing is that, when this fails to work, some asshat in the future will cite it as an example for why free would never work.

Awesome.

#1 Looking at the vast number of posts on BoingBoing and the relatively tiny number of them that has anything to do with Cory Himself, I call bullshit.

Yes, he does post news about himself now and then. I have a hard time believing that you wouldn't post about it if, for example, somebody made a documentary about you. (I know I would.)

The way I see it, he is one of five Bloggers here on BB. If the number of "Posts about Cory" would start to approach a fifth of this site, I too would see a problem. As it's not even anywhere near that and he posts about a bazillion other things beside his own works (And presumably has the ok of the other BB people when doing so.), I don't see any reason to bitch about it.

(Of course, that's the internet. Who needs a reason here, right?)

You could get yourself one of those Ultra-Portable Desktop Packages. Probably a bit expensive to buy for a single trip, but maybe they'll send you a test package in return for a review.

(I know I'd love to have one of those... *sigh*)

Right, a Symbol of Terror... that not only is a common head-dress in many arabic nations, but also ya href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keffiyeh#Military_use">worn by various western militaries (I assume when in the appropriate environment) and loads of people in general.

It's also a symbol associated with left youths in europe, often seen on punks, which is probably why it appears in a video made by the green party.

Symbol of terror my ass...

I wonder how long until some of these escape into the wild, outbreed the normal roaches and become the new plague.

Thanks, Russian Space Program.

What's interesting, to me, is that I recently started another MMO called EVE Online and was surprised how much easier non-combat characters have it there. There are people in the game who earn their money only by mining, or research, or transporting things from A to B for other players or NPCs.

Still hard and there are things you can only achieve/get with violence, but much easier then in other MMOs I know.

Btw, I love #4s idea of naked WoW map exploration. Do it, man, the Internet demands it!

What gets me about these ten steps is that it includes neither the removal of the bulb-base from the socket nor the insertion of a replacement bulb. ^_^

Ok, after seeing those extremly awesome USB heated gloves, I just have to try it. Because otherwise, my girlfriend would kill me.

And maybe I'll even get a pair for myself. (What can I say, our place is really cold sometimes...)

Maybe I misunderstood something here but FREE international shipping?

Maybe I'm overly skeptical though my experiences of having to pay 40+$ for shipping to Austria, but that sounds to good to be true. (Especially wen they have stuff for less then five bucks...)

Does that really work and do the products really, you know, arrive?

Damn... :(

Well, at least if HE can be as optimistic, I think we can too. So I'm really looking forward to any future books. ^_^

Only if he wears a cape...

Although Puppy Linux, the OS used, has significantly less overhead then even Xubuntu, IME, so the 128MB should be more then enough.

But yeah, with RAM being as cheap as it is, getting a higher-powered version shouldn't be too much of a problem. (Even when it might mean opening the case yourself.)

That said, isn't that just an awesome machine? As a Puppy Fan, I'd love to get my hands on this. (Though it's kinda wierd that they use 2.14 for this. Hmmm, maybe later versions don't support their motherboard or something...)

Aaron

ARGH, curse you level 39!!!

(And curse me for being so easily addicted..)

Aim for "-27.6".

(So far, I made it to level 35. THAT's instanity inducing. I hate that level, way too gard for 2am...)

"Lessig ist lässig"

0_O

*sound of brain breaking*

Oh, and theoretically there's another way: A group order. If you order 100 laptops, something like 60 go to you, so if you get 60 people in your area (or withing international postage range, I guess.) together, maybe using Fundable, then that would be a way to get them too. (And probably cheaper, I guess.)

But this is just "read it somewhere on an OLPC site" information, so I don't know much about the hassle involved.

@7: It's a bit of a hassle, but you can look at a way to order an XO in the UK (or anywhere, really) here.

Basically, it involves setting up a mail forwarding service with UPS, which they charge 10$+International Postage for. But it will get you your "Give one-Get one" laptop anywhere in the world.

Aaron

Same here.

(Ok, I actually can't stand re-titling in general, but that's for another rant...)

But, hey, it could be worse.

When the White Wolf roleplaying game "Exalted" was translated into german, they retitled it as "Die Hohen", which technically means "the high ones" or "the ones up high" but sounds sooooooo stupid. I don't have any proof of course, but I've long suspected that this pretty much killed the german line.

So, well, it really could be worse... ^_^

Aaron

Anybody knows what Notebook Cory's using there in the video? I'm intrigued. (And looking for a notebook for myself.)