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> but it's cavalier & mean to tell people they're better off that their hard work & things they've enjoyed have unceremoniously self-destructed. It is a fact o

> but it's cavalier & mean to tell people they're better off that their hard work & things they've enjoyed have unceremoniously self-destructed. It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. Have you stopped to think how cavalier & mean it is to tell people how they should create things that others enjoy?

rektide 4y ago
> It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. I went and played some turns of Civilization that I haven't touched in half a decade a couple weeks ago. Every couple years I like to play a couple matches of Mechwarrior 2. These things don't self destruct. They harken from an age before online services, when personal computers let us manage & operate our own systems, let us backup our saves & our games. > Have you stopped to think how cavalier & mean it is to tell people how they should create things that others enjoy? In a way that doesn't explode unexpectedly? Yeah, right, I'm the mean one here. Please, this is just more facetiously cruel antagonizing. What is with the anti-social cruelty?
- Kbelicius 4y ago
  > I went and played some turns of Civilization that I haven't touched in half a decade a couple weeks ago. Every couple years I like to play a couple matches of Mechwarrior 2. These things don't self destruct. They harken from an age before online services, when personal computers let us manage & operate our own systems, let us backup our saves & our games. It takes time. > In a way that doesn't explode unexpectedly? Yeah, right, I'm the mean one here. Please, this is just more facetiously cruel antagonizing. What is with the anti-social cruelty? It doesn't explode unexpectedly. It explodes in a way that the creator made it explode. So, yeah, it seems that you are the mean one here.
  - lmm 4y ago
    Very rarely is "exploding" part of the artistic intent. More likely it's something the auteur was never consulted on and the publisher didn't care enough to avoid.
  - rektide 4y ago
    Your insistence & persistence in both being cruel to consumers & also personally insulting me at the same time is remarkable. There's been a pretty fair & reasonable deal in computing for decades. Preservation is getting harder, worse, impossible. This is- pretty clearly to most of us- a loss.
    - Kbelicius 4y ago
      > Your insistence & persistence in both being cruel to consumers & also personally insulting me at the same time is remarkable. As far as I can see the only think I'm saying here is that creators should be able to create things as they see fit. I did not say a word about consumers or what they should be doing. I would love to know what gives you the impression that I'm being cruel to consumers here. You did insult me first, why are you surprised that I would defend myself? You are even doing it in this post to.
      - mrob 4y ago
        >creators should be able to create things as they see fit So you support the abolition of copyright law? That would certainly go a long way toward solving the problem of media self-destructing within human timescales. But if creators get to benefit from government granted monopolies, it's only fair that we introduce some consumer-protection law too. Copyright was intended to benefit both consumers and producers. Deliberate destruction of media is a sign that it's drifted too far in the producers' favor.
        Kbelicius 4y ago
        When I wrote "creators should be able to create things as they see fit" I wasn't really thinking that as allowing them to ignore laws, like safety and such. As for my opinion on copyright laws, I guess I'd be for their abolition. But that is just my opinion that isn't really based on any real knowledge of these laws or what consequences they have/removing them would have. > But if creators get to benefit from government granted monopolies, it's only fair that we introduce some consumer-protection law too. With this I wholeheartedly agree.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
josephg 4y ago
> It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. True. The Parthenon, the work of classical authors and philosophers. Michelangelo’s David. The work of musicians, artists, architects and authors from bygone eras. They all fade and disappear without the tireless effort of conservationists and historians everywhere. And thank goodness for their work. Its an indictment of our modern technology landscape how much tomorrow’s historians will be missing. Perfect digital copies are trivially easy to make, but that doesn’t seem to help. Is it possible to run old iOS apps? Play old Xbox or PlayStation games after Microsoft and Sony shut down their old online services? Install and run old copies of adobe products? See what GMail looked like when it launched? Or play earlier versions of multiplayer games like WoW or EverQuest? No. In a few years it will all be gone, rendered inoperable, “upgraded” or purged. The work of pirates, software crackers and emulators has kept some of what we had in the 90s alive. But so much software we have today has been intentionally artificially made to be ephemeral. Chess has survived for thousands of years. How long will DoTA, Diablo3 or Hearthstone be playable? These games will be lucky to survive a generation. What an inhumane way to treat a creator’s life’s work. What callous disregard we hold for the curiosity of tomorrow.
- turtledove 4y ago
  How many buildings contemporary to the Parthenon still exist? How many of Michelangelo's contemporaries still exist? Some games will last forever, some will not.
  - josephg 4y ago
    Will any video games which require online services outlive the services which they depend on? Or any web services, like Notion or Google Docs? The way we’re going, I’d be surprised if modern games last 25 years; let alone 2500.
yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
> It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. Not, statistically, on a meaningful time scale. All my data will probably one day be gone... But I have enough backups and replicas and remote repos that it's unlikely to happen before my own death.
paskozdilar 4y ago
> It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. Yeah, but on what timescale? Saying it's justified for software to break as soon as the company dies because it would be destroyed on it's own anyway is like saying "we all die anyway so we might as well be slaughtered".

rektide 4y ago

> It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. I went and played some turns of Civilization that I haven't touched in half a decade a couple weeks ago. Every couple years I like to play a couple matches of Mechwarrior 2. These things don't self destruct. They harken from an age before online services, when personal computers let us manage & operate our own systems, let us backup our saves & our games. > Have you stopped to think how cavalier & mean it is to tell people how they should create things that others enjoy? In a way that doesn't explode unexpectedly? Yeah, right, I'm the mean one here. Please, this is just more facetiously cruel antagonizing. What is with the anti-social cruelty?

Kbelicius 4y ago
> I went and played some turns of Civilization that I haven't touched in half a decade a couple weeks ago. Every couple years I like to play a couple matches of Mechwarrior 2. These things don't self destruct. They harken from an age before online services, when personal computers let us manage & operate our own systems, let us backup our saves & our games. It takes time. > In a way that doesn't explode unexpectedly? Yeah, right, I'm the mean one here. Please, this is just more facetiously cruel antagonizing. What is with the anti-social cruelty? It doesn't explode unexpectedly. It explodes in a way that the creator made it explode. So, yeah, it seems that you are the mean one here.
- lmm 4y ago
  Very rarely is "exploding" part of the artistic intent. More likely it's something the auteur was never consulted on and the publisher didn't care enough to avoid.
- rektide 4y ago
  Your insistence & persistence in both being cruel to consumers & also personally insulting me at the same time is remarkable. There's been a pretty fair & reasonable deal in computing for decades. Preservation is getting harder, worse, impossible. This is- pretty clearly to most of us- a loss.
  - Kbelicius 4y ago
    > Your insistence & persistence in both being cruel to consumers & also personally insulting me at the same time is remarkable. As far as I can see the only think I'm saying here is that creators should be able to create things as they see fit. I did not say a word about consumers or what they should be doing. I would love to know what gives you the impression that I'm being cruel to consumers here. You did insult me first, why are you surprised that I would defend myself? You are even doing it in this post to.
    - mrob 4y ago
      >creators should be able to create things as they see fit So you support the abolition of copyright law? That would certainly go a long way toward solving the problem of media self-destructing within human timescales. But if creators get to benefit from government granted monopolies, it's only fair that we introduce some consumer-protection law too. Copyright was intended to benefit both consumers and producers. Deliberate destruction of media is a sign that it's drifted too far in the producers' favor.
      - Kbelicius 4y ago
        When I wrote "creators should be able to create things as they see fit" I wasn't really thinking that as allowing them to ignore laws, like safety and such. As for my opinion on copyright laws, I guess I'd be for their abolition. But that is just my opinion that isn't really based on any real knowledge of these laws or what consequences they have/removing them would have. > But if creators get to benefit from government granted monopolies, it's only fair that we introduce some consumer-protection law too. With this I wholeheartedly agree.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

josephg 4y ago

> It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. True. The Parthenon, the work of classical authors and philosophers. Michelangelo’s David. The work of musicians, artists, architects and authors from bygone eras. They all fade and disappear without the tireless effort of conservationists and historians everywhere. And thank goodness for their work. Its an indictment of our modern technology landscape how much tomorrow’s historians will be missing. Perfect digital copies are trivially easy to make, but that doesn’t seem to help. Is it possible to run old iOS apps? Play old Xbox or PlayStation games after Microsoft and Sony shut down their old online services? Install and run old copies of adobe products? See what GMail looked like when it launched? Or play earlier versions of multiplayer games like WoW or EverQuest? No. In a few years it will all be gone, rendered inoperable, “upgraded” or purged. The work of pirates, software crackers and emulators has kept some of what we had in the 90s alive. But so much software we have today has been intentionally artificially made to be ephemeral. Chess has survived for thousands of years. How long will DoTA, Diablo3 or Hearthstone be playable? These games will be lucky to survive a generation. What an inhumane way to treat a creator’s life’s work. What callous disregard we hold for the curiosity of tomorrow.

turtledove 4y ago
How many buildings contemporary to the Parthenon still exist? How many of Michelangelo's contemporaries still exist? Some games will last forever, some will not.
- josephg 4y ago
  Will any video games which require online services outlive the services which they depend on? Or any web services, like Notion or Google Docs? The way we’re going, I’d be surprised if modern games last 25 years; let alone 2500.

yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago

> It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. Not, statistically, on a meaningful time scale. All my data will probably one day be gone... But I have enough backups and replicas and remote repos that it's unlikely to happen before my own death.

paskozdilar 4y ago

> It is a fact of life that everything, if it isn't destroyed, unceremoniously self-destructs. Yeah, but on what timescale? Saying it's justified for software to break as soon as the company dies because it would be destroyed on it's own anyway is like saying "we all die anyway so we might as well be slaughtered".