Star Trek looked much better. They couldn’t do the numbers that B5 could do, at least not until the later parts of DS9. But what they were able to show actually looked realistic. B5’s effects were very, very clearly done on consumer-level computers. They were quite good considering, but didn’t look real. Star Trek was doing things with large physical models and it showed. Ships and stations looked like real objects (since they were!) rather than the smooth curves of everything in B5.
As a young SF devourer at the time, the cheap effects were a major turnoff and one reason I never got into B5.
I’m not going to spend a hundred bucks to try a series I may not even like. It would be one thing if I loved it and wanted to watch it again, or if I had seen enough to know that I want to watch it all. But that’s a lot of money for an unknown quantity.
Anonymity is where little bad actors play. The big ones don't need to be anonymous because their nefariousness is legal, or they don't get prosecuted. See: waves vaguely in the direction of the US government.
That said, the recent waves vaguely in the direction of the US government has demonstrated the weakness of legal restrictions on the government. It's good to have something you can point to when they violate it, but it's too easily ignored. There's no substitute for good governance.
Sorry, unless your IP is being infringed, you don't get to decide what's private or public. The internet is a vast and wondrous place. Figuring out which parts of it are worth your time is a you problem.
You make one really good birthday cake. Following the success of this went to your local school fete out of the goodness of your heart and set up a cake stall, had a complaints and suggestions box on the table, maybe even had a donation tin out. You know it's out of the goodness of you heart because everyone will SEE you doing this and maybe you'll get hired by the local bakery.
But then it's a bit of a long day and you start screaming at everyone who came up to you for wasting your time, rejected requests to not put broken glass fragments in the cakes, get into a fistfight with the local health inspector who pointed out you need certain food prep hygiene practices. You get big mad, and leave your stall in a huff, where hapless strangers stumble across your cakes only to find they are now covered in bugs and get sick from eating them.
Would this be acceptable or unacceptable behaviour on your part?
Are you as the cake stall operator taking advantage of the the commons in any way (donations, showing off your bake-folio?)
Are you damaging the commons or people visiting the commons?
Does your free speech expressed in cake form outweigh the rights of people to tell you to change what you are doing?
Does your freedom of expression mean you should never be accountable?
Should people be thankful that you let them have cakes covered in bugs, even if they get sick as a result?
Does the local health inspector who is an expert in a domain that overlaps with everything food have any standing?
This is a contrived thought exercise; obviously.
But I would bet that you clearly identify that violated social norms aren't great; you would agree there are expectations about access to a commons have implied standards of behaviour for all parties; you have expectations around quality vs general safety, etc.
Now imagine I make a weird cake and I think it's interesting. I put up a poster with a photo and a recipe and say "thought this was cool, try it if you want." And then some nonce comes along and tells me off for a reckless disregard of other people's time and nerves. Compares it to an open manhole cover that could get somebody killed.
Throwing some interesting code onto a web site isn't like setting up a booth at a community event. Its not even really like putting up a poster, since posters get seen by whoever happens to come nearby whereas web sites only get seen by people who seek them out, but it's about the closest you'll get to a real-world analogy.
Why are you trusting data to some random open-source project with no documentation?
The search engine is only going to direct you to my open source repo if you're searching for whatever it does. It's as if you'd only see my cake recipe if you were searching for cake recipes. And just like cake recipes, your search results will contain everything from superb production-tested projects (if there are any) to random stuff people have put up that isn't really used.
If you're searching for software and you find some random project that isn't very well tested or maintained, and you put that project to use in a place where it can cause data loss, that again sounds like a you problem.
If I post an article about how drinking bleach makes your skin softer, I share responsibility when someone does it.
If I post an article about how to make your own bleach, and a reader says “that sounds tasty” and drinks some, that’s not my responsibility in any way.
If I put up some trash code with a README that says “this is solid, reliable code that you should use for storing all of your financial data and family photos,” I have responsibility for what happens when people do that. If I just put up some trash code and say, I thought this was interesting and wanted to share it, and some numbskull decided to use it for something critical without thoroughly evaluating it first, not my responsibility.
> README that says “this is solid, reliable code that you should use for storing all of your financial data and family photos,”
Show me a readme like that! I'll wait.
Everybody writes a legalese disclaimer that basically say it's trash software and the author has no resposibility, but here's the thing: everybody ignores it. This is the reality of FOSS software.
Nobody has the time to audit the code of every FOSS they use. We all assume some basic quality such as not deleteting /var/db and the responsibility is yours to not do that or not publish it, no matter what you wrote in the readme/disclaimer.
“ SQLite is a C-language library that implements a small, fast, self-contained, high-reliability, full-featured, SQL database engine. SQLite is the most used database engine in the world. SQLite is built into all mobile phones and most computers and comes bundled inside countless other applications that people use every day.”
You don’t have to fully audit what you use, but you’d better do some basic vetting. If there’s no web site, no documentation, no activity on the issue tracker, then maybe when you put all your precious data into the thing and lose it, that’s your problem.
I can't tell if this is satire or not. I fear that it's not.
"If you make your project public, it means you want and expect people to use it. You could at least write some documentation, so I don't waste my time and then find out, days later, it isn't capable of what I need or I simply don't know how to use it."
WTF? If I make it public it's because I think other people might like to see it. That runs the gamut from "this is a production-ready project that solves a major problem" to "this is useless but shows some interesting techniques you might like to learn from."
If you spent days fiddling with an undocumented project that turned out not to do what you need, I'm not the one who wasted your time. That would be you.
If you want to limit yourself to only looking at high-quality projects with documentations and active bug trackers and PR reviewers, go for it. That's probably a good move! But putting some source files on a web server does not imply any further obligation, in those areas or any other.
I sing in the shower all the time. I'd rather have my fingernails pulled out one at a time and the video sold to psychopaths than go to an open mic night or participate in a talent show.
I know what I am and I know the degree to which people suck. Don't walk into abuse teeth first and then make a surprise Pikachu face about it.
The same is true for biological humans. The moment the first upload exists, they’ll be justified in wondering if the ones made from meat are truly conscious.
Indeed. I know at least one other biological human was conscious at some point, because people have this idea of consciousness without me telling them about it. But there's no way of knowing for any specific person.
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