ENIGMA Development Environment

I've committed a working and tested updater, but I wouldn't use it, partly because update doesn't work (due to a bug I'm trying to fix, but first time checkout works and checks out the latest revision), but mainly because it sleeps until the update and make is done, which takes long enough that the user would probably think that LGM froze.
I've also committed the latest LGM, which replaces the infamous "ZOMG ERROR JNA ISN'T A PLUGIN, LGM IS GONNA ASPLODE" with "Info: jna.jar is not an LGM plugin: null: No plugin entry point (LGM-Plugin)" along with a minor bugfix.

Stay tuned for more progress.

Microsoft and Xerox was a copyright case, not a patent one. As we get into the digital age, IP largely took hold in the form of Copyright, rarely did we see Patents except for in hardware, but hardware has been around for longer than hardware Patents as well.

These are technologies that the government could not anticipate, and thus did not have laws for. During the time that they were free of copyright restriction is the time we see the most innovation. Instability was also prevalent, not because it was unregulated, but because it was new. Regulations like copyright, if implemented too soon, would have completely crippled the digital age, and we'd be stuck with the least instable (although still very unstable) piece of crap that came about, and nobody could innovate off of it without paying them a pretty penny for the idea. Fortunately enough, it was implemented late enough that the digital market had stabilized somewhat reasonably and we ended up with Microsoft on top with their still-quite-buggy system. It was only several cases later which *released* some of the holds of IP that innovation, and competition, such as linux, Open Office, etc, started to continue the stabilization process and provide the needed competition to keep Microsoft in check.

Also, I've been kind enough to refrain from pointing out all the fallacies you've been making up to now.

abolition of systems that have, however poorly, functioned for hundreds or thousands of years, is never a good idea

the pre-IP system functioned quite fine for a considerable length of time, until *only recently* did they decide to start fiddling in the market hoping to stimulate areas unnaturally and give in to people complaining about theft of things that we didn't even think could be stolen (imagine if someone went into court and complained about their neighbor stealing their air...).

I'm arguing against throwing everything out and going with a completely new and untested system.

Pre-IP is not untested.

It's called a broken window fallacy. Even if we did see positive effects, we aren't seeing the positive effects that could have been had were it not for copyright.

Suppose that we drop a bomb on your house when nobody's home. This is obviously a good thing because it spurs economic activity - you have to buy a new house, which stimulates the housing market, which in turn stimulates other markets as the workers there buy new things with their newfound money. As you can see, dropping bombs on houses is a very good thing, just as copyrights are a very good thing.

Broken Window Fallacy.

Besides, even if we did try to "fix" IP, as explained in the article I linked, there's no evidence to support the idea that it would be positive at all, and plenty to support that it would be negative, not to mention philosophically inconsistent/unsound.

fixing patent laws themselves (e.g. no patents on algorithms or other ideas that anyone could come up with independently) would be even better.

Or we could just eliminate copyright/patent laws altogether, since they don't do what they're supposed to (reward and thus encourage creativity), usually doing quite the opposite, and here we see a perfect example of that, where a company is spending capital to hire lawyers and fine the crap out of another company when they could just be using that capital to improve Java, which they've all but decided not to do (remember when they dropped all those developers and then postponed Java 7's release indefinitely?).

For a philosophical and in-depth analysis for the reasons to get rid of copyright/patent/intellectual property, along with dismantling all the arguments I've ever heard (and some I haven't heard) for IP, Stephan Kinsella has an excellent paper, Against Intellectual Property, http://mises.org/books/against.pdf

After testing on Linux, Windows, the IPhone, and Mac, we've just tested and confirmed that Enigma works on the Toaster too.



Enjoy.

Also thanks for not including some wonky-ass sprite editor, GIMP works just fine for me. High-fives, guys, you made a boy happy today.

LGM does not include a sprite editor simply because we haven't found a good one to include and haven't finished writing our own yet. GIMP is overly complex for many people (including myself), and not even included in some distros (such as the latest Ubuntu release), not to mention it takes ages to load for many. We are working on our own sprite editor, which is kind of like a cross-over between MSPaint and GM's, so that less competent graphic artists, like myself, can quickly design a basic image without worrying about the complexities of GIMP or such.

That said, also like in GM, once said sprite editor is added, you have the option to toggle a checkbox (essentially) to use GIMP instead of it.

Is this objectionable?

because then it will be stable enough for them to use it.