Locke

"...if you have a legal question, you should ask a lawyer, and only a lawyer" [emphasis mine]

Because lawyers are magic people who never make mistakes? Who are completely trustworthy? Because the act of simply discussing a legal matter with friends will somehow cause irreparable harm?

I'm leery whenever someone tells me what I can and can't discuss with whom.

Let's say I'm having car trouble. I'm not stupid, I know I'm going to have to take it to a mechanic. But, first I discuss the problem with some friends and family. I get a couple uninformed opinions on what it might be, what it might cost to fix, etc.

When I take the car into a mechanic am I worse off for getting a few uninformed opinions?

This is an interesting view point for someone on Hacker News, considering the way we follow tech startups here...

I'm a lifelong sports fan. Only in my mid 20's did I start becoming interested in business. One of the first things I noticed is how similar the business page is to the sports page. People follow companies like they're sports teams, gathering detailed statistics (profit, market cap, etc), analyzing match-ups (Microsoft vs Yahoo), discussing all-stars (Steve Jobs), etc.

Techcrunch is our Sports Illustrated.

While a lot of athletes from around the world attend college / compete in the US, Usain Bolt isn't a good example.

I seem to remember one of the commentators saying that a lot of the sprinters from Jamaica (and the Caribbean in general) are somewhat unique for having not come to the US.

Usain Bolt's wikipedia page doesn't have him spending any time in the US:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usain_Bolt

I've always wanted this:

http://despair.com/limitations.html

For some reason I find it inspirational even though it's not supposed to be. My brain must not be wired correctly.

VML and Canvas provide very different APIs and behave very differently. Explorer Canvas maps the Canvas API onto VML with very poor results. It may be possible to build a library that uses either Canvas or VML but they're so different I almost think it'd be easier to target each separately. Either way, this is a non-trivial pain in the neck.

It's amazing how desperately people want canvas compatibility in IE. It's such a simple API, too. It's hard to imagine that it would take any real resources for Microsoft to create a nice, fast implementation. But, once again they seem to prefer holding the web hostage.

You're right though, it seems unlikely that a plugin will succeed. But, the fact that someone's working on creating one is more proof of how lacking the other workarounds are and how much people want this technology.

I'd like it if the site were a little less self conscience. As a lot of sites like this grow, it seems like they all go through a sort of navel gazing, meta lovefest.

This is odd to me because the whole voting thing should mean that whatever the site is, is what we want. There should be enough wiggle room for the site to magically change with our changing interests. And, yet, not so much wiggle room that it can be completely taken over by people with completely different interests (politics, etc).

But, it's never been clear to me what use there is in talking about this...

Explorer Canvas aka "Excanvas" uses VML. That's kind of what my post was about. It's a very nice hack, but it's certainly not native support.

I started playing with this yesterday. It might make for a good alternative to canvas. At least from a compatibility standpoint.

Internet Explorer doesn't have native support for canvas or svg, which is why Excanvas and Raphael fall back on vml to provide canvas and svg-like support, respectively.

Canvas and vml really aren't a good match, though. Canvas is stateless, whereas both vml and svg insert objects into the DOM. It's this mismatch that really kills Excanvas' performance when rendering any kind of animation.

While it's true that you can't copyright a game, you can copyright parts of a game. For example, the game's artwork or the official Scrabble dictionary. I haven't actually played Scrabulous, but if they used the exact same board layout, that might be copyright infringement. Or, if they used the official word list, that might be copyright infringement.

You can also copyright the text describing the rules of the game. But, I doubt they'd be so lazy as to copy that...

And, of course, you can trademark the name of a game. As you said, Scrabulous is probably too similar to Scrabble.

I think it's possible to legally make a Scrabble knock off (not a lawyer, though!)... but, if Scrabulous had used a non-derivative board, word list, and a completely different name would they have gotten so popular?

Yeah, I'm really not sure what to expect from subscriptions.

I got the impression that GTO gave up on paid memberships to increase user uptake to pursue advertising dollars. I don't know a lot about their operations, but didn't they have very restricted free accounts? I can see where that'd seriously hamper user adoption.

> It's all about "I made these" instead of being about your players or the games.

Thanks, this is a little hard to take, but it's good advice. The focus should be more on the players and the games.

Yes, this is a solo project.

Yes, of course. I think I unintentionally tied advertising with community. I meant them as separate objectives.

Some sites run annoying advertising along side the games while you're trying to play. I won't.

Some sites seem to cater towards children (as far as site design, graphics, etc), I'd rather appeal to adults.

And, some sites focus very heavily on established games like Chess and Go (which I think are great), but I'd rather bring attention to lesser known games. Although I also plan on having more established games, I just want them to be a smaller part of the mix.

A good question. It's been a while since I played on yahoo games, so I'm not sure I can do a full comparison justice.

At yahoo games the focus is (or was, anyway) on real-time play. You play games serially. You spend a lot of time waiting for your opponent to move. Or, if you spend too much time thinking you take verbal punishment from someone who's impatient.

At Vying Games you can play real-time. But, most people play turn-based (more like correspondence chess). You tend to have multiple games going at once. When you have a few minutes throughout the day you go through your games and make your moves. You don't really spend time waiting for your opponent. You don't feel rushed. This is great for busy people who want to enjoy games a few minutes at a time.

Philosophically, I don't want to get as obnoxious about advertising. I'd rather the site have a more adult (mature?) community. And, I'd rather focus on more obscure (but great!) games where possible.

A mixture of membership fees, advertising, and anything else I can think of. Maybe some kind of storefront that sells merchandise related to the games (books, game boards, etc). Maybe an amazon affiliate setup or some such.

Thanks, that's valuable advice. I think I do have to focus more on telling a story. Regular blog posts about the games, strategy, why they're worth learning, etc.

Sometimes I find myself overly preoccupied with programming. Marketing seems easy until you try it! (at least in my case)

Thanks, for the feedback. I've found links to the bot-play pages always do much better than links to the rules. I'm trying to get more people to play each other, though, so it's hard to know what to emphasize. There are probably a lot of navigational improvements that need to be made still.

I just pushed out a major update (see: http://vying.org/blog/2008/07/the-big-release), and I'd greatly appreciate any advice or thoughts.

Conceptually reminds me of this game:

http://www.nekogames.jp/mt/2008/01/cursor10.html

This is a pretty long article. The title here makes it sound like a business article, but it doesn't really strike me as such.

At the heart of the article is the philosophic question: Do animals think in the way humans do? Do they feel not only fear but anxiety? Do they reason? Or, are they thoughtless automatons, acting on instincts and learned behavior alone?

Turns out a lot of big pharma companies are developing doggy equivalents of a lot of human drugs like prozac and friends. Vets are prescribing medications for separation anxiety and other behavioral problems that were once addressed soley with training (or euthanasia).

If human drugs work the same way in animals, what does that say out about an animal's capacity to think and feel?

Or, turn it on it's head: If unwanted behavior is seen more often in animals that are in "unnatural" environments (for example, a horse left in a tiny stall all day, as opposed to horses in the wild), and we "fix" those animals with the same drugs we prescribe humans, what does that say about us?

Do we need drugs strictly because we lead unhealthy lifestyles?

Hey, it sounds like the OP has lost the passion. If all the fire has gone out of his relationship with programming, how should he get it back?

Here's what worked for me when I was working for the man:

Pick an evening sometime this week. Tell people you're not going to be available. Ask your SO to go out with friends or something. I'd grab a quick bite after work, go home to an empty apartment. Close the blinds, dim the lights. Turn off my cell phone, turn off the wifi on my laptop. Put on a playlist of music that puts me in a good, happy, mellow mood. Poor myself a glass of wine, and settle down in front of the computer.

And just program. Don't worry about getting the code just right. Don't worry about business logic, unit tests, or what might happen if the user clicks the wrong thing at the wrong time. Just program. Make the computer do something cool, just because you can.

Who cares if it won't scale? Who cares if there's no business use case? Who cares if people won't pay for it?

Forget all that. That's work. You won't be able to program after work if you make it work. It has to be different. It has to be fun.

Wow, different strokes. I wouldn't want anything to do with code that used variables like "SkuNdx" over a simple i, j, or k.

That said, ideally I prefer using languages with each or foreach or a similar construct. If you want to iterate over a set of objects, you should only have a variable for an object. Who cares about the index?

    foreach( sku in skus )

Or

    skus.each do { |sku| .... }

If you reserve i, j, k for cases where you actually need an index, I think you'll find that i has even more meaning: i is an index and it's presence means the index is actually important. That's a lot of meaning for a single letter.

With respect to what other programmers might do, I think "defensive" programming is a waste of energy. A bad programmer will screw up your code regardless of what you name a variable. The best you can do is avoid working with such people. If that doesn't work, write unit tests. Seriously, at least then you know that a bad programmer broke your code before you get a call.

Several of these games can be played on my site if anyone would like to explore them further. Specifically: Amazons, Checkers, Dots and Boxes, Othello, and Phutball. I like them all (naturally), but Phutball has become one of my favorites.

http://vying.org

My username there is 'eki', if you'd like to get a game going with a real person instead of the bots.

That's a very good point. I've had a player ask for a "feature" where he could have his username appear in red instead of the normal color. I think people like to be able to customize their internet personas and those kind of features would make nice carrots.

Thanks, that's a lot of very good advice!

About ads... large game sites (competitors) tend to have lots and lots of very, very annoying ads. But, they're free. I'd rather be a smaller, membership site without all the annoying ads. So, I'm reluctant to even use ads on free accounts because I think it sends the wrong message about what I want my site to be.

I didn't downmod you, I think it's a good question. I think forcing users who won't pay to leave might be a good idea in some cases. Consider the cost in server resources (if it's a server-based app), customer support, etc. It may be too expensive to keep users who won't pay.

Of course, that assumes you can get plenty of paying users in the first place...

I didn't want to get to specific, because I'm generally curious about this. Also, it seems like an issue that would effect a lot of startups, and I think it'd be better for everyone if the discussion was more general.

As to your comments about my site specifically, I think you're absolutely right about the 30-day free account. I think if I force anybody to leave I'd risk killing the site. I'd rather run it as a hobby site than kill it.

My site is a turn-based games site. There are many others like it, most either charge for memberships or are free, advertising-based sites. Some seem to be very successful, some I would classify more as hobby sites.

A few of my current ideas are:

  * Vacation days (a very standard feature... they extend the time limit on your games so you don't while you're away on vacation) (carrot)
  * Advertising free (I don't have advertising now, so I'd have to introduce it for the free accounts) (carrot or stick?)
  * 30-day free membership (stick -- don't like this idea)
  * Limit on the number of simultaneous games a user can have (stick -- don't *really* like this idea, either)
  * Prize tournaments for members only (need to research this idea... not sure I like it) (carrot)

And I'm considering a bunch of other minor perks (customize your profile, change colors, etc...) that would count as very small carrots.

I'm about to switch from svn to git, and I'm hoping it'll make a difference. My webapp has been released a while now and here's how I'm hoping git will help my release cycle:

I don't like / use svn's branching support. So, after every release I'm reluctant to start any major development. What if I've pulled the guts out of my app, and a critical bug is discovered?

Clearly not a problem if I have either a stable branch that I can apply the bug fix to, or a branch for whatever major feature I'm working on.

It's quite possible that this is my shortcoming and has nothing to do with svn vs git. But, if switching to git (which seems to have great branching support) is what it takes for me to adopt a better practice then I'm for it.

Anyway, I think SCM is a major part of running a software startup. It has too much of an effect on operations not to be important.

I like your site, it's very nice. I've been learning Go, so now I have another toy to play with. : ))

I plan to add games like Go and Chess eventually. I've tried to focus on mostly lesser known games so far. The Go and Chess communities are very well served, and I'm not sure I could add much for those communities.

Some of my site is open source, btw. The ruby libraries that implement the game rules and bots is available at:

http://vying.org/dev/public

The server itself is closed source, but I plan on adding a well defined http api for outside apps to play there this coming week.