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Checkmate! concludes a chess match and separates the victor from the vanquished. Yet the ending of the chess match is not the most important part of the game. What matters most are the moves and strategies that precede the win and constitute the game.

In his essay written in 1750, The Morals of Chess, Benjamin Franklin focuses on the moves and strategies in chess that can bring about victory, defeat, or stalemate. This simple game teaches individuals many valuable lessons.

Invented around the sixth century in India, chess gradually spread throughout the world and became one of the most popular games in human history. From personal chessboards to professional chess tournaments, many people in the world play and understand the game.

Franklin praises the games simplicity, for it is engaging in itself. It can be enjoyed without gambling or feeling that anything needs to be gained from playing.

Franklin points out that chess enables us to acquire and practice skills and virtues that are beneficial. For, he says, life is a kind of chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effects of prudence or the want of it.

Chess encourages foresight. This virtue considers what present actions a player can make for the future. For example, if the pawn advances, then the bishop can move forward and take out the opposing queen.

Chess cultivates ones circumspection, for players must look at the whole board and all the pieces. Each piece possesses a different ability and affects all the other surrounding pieces. Caution is critical, for players must carefully consider their strategies before making any move. Once a piece is touched, the player must move it, and if the piece is set down, it must be left there.

Most importantly, chess encourages the habit of hoping for a favorable change, and that of persevering in the search of resources. A player may lose most of his pieces yet, through careful moves, can still win.

In their article, Still Thrills: The Drama of Chess, Gary Alan Fine and Harvey Young say that, in a double sense chess is a performance: it is a theatrical event, but it is also an imaginative performance. Theater is not only a realm of bodies, but of imaginations. Of hands and of minds.

As we play or watch chess, let us think about our journey on the worlds great stage. How we play our parts, move, imagine, and contend with conflict matters a great deal.

Chess is all about perspective, angles, logic, and thought. In life, just as in chess, we should be willing and able to explore new perspectives and strategies.

When we find ourselves in a corner or feel as if there is no hope for us, we must refocus and look at all the possibilities. Chess teaches us a great deal about life, as Mr. Franklin knew.

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'The Morals of Chess' by Benjamin Franklin: Life Is Like a Game of Chess - The Epoch Times

LONDON, Oct. 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- idexo is pleased to announce the launch of free Soulbound Token, NFT and Royalty NFT creation software, enabling anyone to draft and deploy an unlimited number of smart contracts and mint an unlimited number of NFTs using a simple no code SaaS tool.

How the system works:

"We're very pleased to be able offer these free tools to help users and companies unlock their NFT and SBT innovations," says Greg Marlin, CEO/CTO, "We can confidently say that there is no easier or quicker way to get up and running building key SBT and NFT use cases. Especially for traditional companies, not having to procure and manage blockchain gas tokens to get started means much less friction in a corporate environment and over the long haul, having something that feels familiar like email credits you get from an email provider breeds comfort and predictability."

The types of smart contracts a user can launch with this tool are capped and uncapped Soulbound Tokens, NFTs and Royalty NFTs. Soulbound Tokens are NFTs that are non-transferable and unlock key use cases such as A, B and C. Royalty NFTs have a set and updateable commission rate that is paid to a specified wallet address whenever a secondary sale transaction is made. This is particularly appealing to artists and event holders, among others.

ABOUT IDEXO

idexo envisions a world where decentralized applications pervade every industry in the $88Trillion/year world economy the way the Internet does.

idexo's mission is to empower innovators to create these industry-disrupting applications.

MEDIA CONTACTCompany: idexoName: Greg MarlinEmail: 345886@email4pr.comCity: LondonCountry: United KingdomWebsite: https://idexo.comPhone: +44 20 8089 1372

SOURCE idexo

Link:
Idexo Launches Free Soulbound Tokens and NFT Creation Software With Unlimited Smart Contracts and NFT Min - Benzinga

Having made various aborted attempts to launch a free version of Pro Tools - the most recent being the now-discontinued Pro Tools | First - Avid is now having another crack at it with the release of Pro Tools Intro.

Available for download now, this has the advantage of being built on the same code base as the new Pro Tools 2022.9, meaning that it should be easier for the developers to keep it up to date.

When Pro Tools | First was discontinued late in 2021, Avid said that the product had become unviable, but with Pro Tools Intro more closely tied to its big brother, were hoping that this new free offering will be here to stay.

In terms of specs, Pro Tools Intro gives you eight audio tracks, eight instrument tracks and eight MIDI tracks. Unlike in Pro Tools | First, theres AAX support - so you can run compatible third-party plugins - and Pro Tools Intro uses the standard .ptx session format.

Pro Tools Intro ships with 35 Avid plugins, including a channel strip, compressor, EQ, filters, reverb and delay. You also get the AIR Xpand!2 virtual instrument, which includes more than 2.500 presets.

Other specs include four Aux tracks, one master track, four simultaneous inputs and outputs, up to 192kHz sample rate recording and playback and support for any Core Audio, ASIO or WASAPI-compatible interface.

As well as being offered as a standalone download, Pro Tools Intro also comes baked-in to all Pro Tools 2022.9 installations, meaning that, if your paid subscription or trial version of that software expires, youll still have a DAW that offers basic functionality. We should also mention that Pro Tools Intro can be installed and used without the need for a physical iLok (though you'll still need an iLok account for software authorisation).

Moving on to the new features in Pro Tools 2022.9, theres now direct integration with Celemonys Melodyone thanks to the support for the ARA 2 protocol. This means that the Melodyne interface is now docked within Pro Tools, speeding up your workflow.

ARA 2 support applies to all versions of Pro Tools, including Intro, with the Artist, Studio and Flex editions all shipping with Melodyne 5 essential, a feature-limited version of the pitch and time manipulation software. If you have a higher-level version of Melodyne already installed, this will automatically show up within Pro Tools.

The other big addition in 2022.9 is Aux I/O, a macOS-exclusive feature that enables flexible routing of audio to and from Pro Tools to other software and hardware. You can easily stream your Pro Tools audio directly to Zoom, for example - great when someone needs to review a mix in realtime, remotely - or record audio in from or to another music production application. This could make Aux I/O a great addition for the increasing numbers of people who like to work across multiple DAWs.

Discussing the Pro Tools 2022.9 update, Francois Quereuil, Vice President, Product Management for Audio and Music Solutions, Avid, said: Music creators of every skill level will heighten their artistic potential and accelerate their productivity thanks to the innovation now available inside our newest Pro Tools update.

Were working hard to delight the entire creative community, and this is one of our most exciting recent releases for them, with users now taking command of amazing new capabilities right inside their Pro Tools experience to push the boundaries of their music production workflows further than ever before.

You can compare all the versions of Pro Tools now on the Avid (opens in new tab) website. The price of a subscription plan starts at $10 a month for Pro Tools Artist.

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Pro Tools Intro: new free DAW opens up the industry-standard music production software to everyone - MusicRadar

Software development is a game of creativity and intellectual property in which developers use their knowledge of coding, logic, algorithms and systems to solve complex problems.

This sometimes results in proprietary, or closed source, tools. Other software is open source: released openly to the global developer community, which can change, refine, build upon and reuse its code in other projects.

For decades, these two models have been the main approaches to software availability and licensing. But today, the open core software model -- which shares attributes with both open and closed source -- is also gaining ground. In this article, we explore the use cases, benefits and limitations of open source vs. open core software for developers and business leaders.

Open source is a general distribution and licensing model that makes code freely available for use, modification and redistribution within the terms of the open source license.

The Open Source Initiative uses 10 criteria to define open source software:

Under the open source model, individual developers and organizations can create software and release it into the open source domain, where it can then be used, modified and combined with other software. Any resulting work can itself be redistributed as open source software.

The following are examples of open source software:

Anyone can create open source software, from enthusiastic individuals hoping to contribute to the development community to large enterprises that decide to release a tool or platform as open source code.

While open source software can be distributed and used without direct costs or specific agreements with the creator, its code is governed by formal licenses that define it as open source and outline the specific terms for its use and redistribution. There are numerous open source software license models, including the following:

Open source code is pervasive across the software development industry -- it's increasingly difficult to find an application or platform that does not include at least some open source components. The following are some of the many use cases for open source software, with examples in each category:

Before adopting open source code or platforms, organizations should carefully consider the pros and cons of the open source model.

The central advantage of open source is savings. Software is built from modules and algorithms, and finding existing code that fills specific needs can accelerate a project and free developers to focus their efforts on other areas. Similarly, using an open source platform can reduce the costs associated with acquiring and licensing a software platform.

However, the downsides of open source software can be significant. First, freely distributed open source software has no official support beyond documentation and community response. Although paid support options are often available, open source tools generally don't have dedicated technical support. This can make adopting open source code and platforms difficult and time consuming, and organizations need experienced IT staff to integrate and maintain open source code.

Open source software can also present compliance problems for developers and businesses. Open source code might contain vulnerabilities that are only caught at the review and static testing stages or might fail to meet the organization's coding standards. Similarly, open source platforms can contain exploitable flaws that are challenging to fix, and patches or updates might be too infrequent to meet the organization's code quality needs.

Finally, open source licensing typically demands continued open source treatment of the original code as well as any code derived from open source components. Consequently, a business developing proprietary or tool-specific software might not be able to meet the obligations imposed by open source licenses.

In such a scenario, using open source software is impossible or would put the business at risk of violating open source licensing terms. Thus, adopting open source elements must be consistent with the terms and conditions of the components used.

Open core is a hybrid software distribution and licensing model that combines the characteristics of the open source and closed source approaches.

Open core software typically follows the guidelines of the open source model for the core features and functionality of a component or platform, while making other advanced features and functionality proprietary and limiting access using a fee-based structure, such as a paywall. This is also called the freemium model, common in many subscription services and applications.

There are three main differences between the open source and open core models:

Alternatively, open core tools and platforms might not develop or deploy proprietary modules at all, instead providing the code necessary to combine two or more open source projects into a cohesive package -- an approach dubbed glue code. Glue code offers a proprietary way to process data or facilitate interactions among several open source modules.

Open core software companies include Docker, Elastic, GitLab, MongoDB and Redis. Examples of this monetization style include Kubernetes or a Linux kernel modified to serve cloud providers, who then charge users a fee to use that uniquely modified codebase within their cloud services.

Because the open core model is relatively new in software development, its benefits and disadvantages are still emerging.

In general, open core software has the advantage of clear differentiation between free and paid features and functionalities. This helps users make informed choices about corresponding costs and capabilities. With the revenue generated by paid features and functions, developers can provide technical support and reinvest revenue back into the project for more frequent updates and fixes.

However, rules and limitations around open core projects can become murky, especially if multiple licenses are involved. Adopters must consider how to access the open source part of the code, if desired. Paid or proprietary licensed code must be clearly delineated, as any uncertainty can make open core software challenging to adopt in traditionally open source environments.

The open core approach can also limit the size of the software's developer and user community. Open core adopters are more dependent on the original developers, as they must defer to the developers for consultation and support. This, in turn, can translate into higher risk and make adopters less likely to modify and redistribute the core software.

It's handy to compare open source and open core against two other standard software distribution models: closed source and source available.

Closed source refers to commercial or proprietary software that businesses build and license for development. Closed source software is fundamentally a black box: Users rarely have insight into the code, and many closed source licenses deliberately prohibit decompiling or reverse-engineering the code. The software is treated as complete, with ongoing updates and support for installation and troubleshooting.

A source available software approach is a slight modification of the closed source model in which commercial software is developed and licensed for a fee. Source available tools offer a higher level of transparency by making source code available for review and analysis. This benefits software customers that are concerned with security and code quality issues, such as government entities.

Original post:
Open core vs. open source: What's the difference? - TechTarget

Two weeks ago, PayPal shuttered the account of the Free Speech Union, a London-based organization founded by social commentator Toby Young to advocate for free expression. PayPal also closed Youngs personal account and that of his news and opinion website, The Daily Sceptic.

On Tuesday, PayPal reinstated the accounts, but only after sustained public criticism of the companys apparently viewpoint-discriminatory actions.

Forgive me if I dont leap for joy, Young told The Telegraph newspaper. The last two weeks have been a nightmare as Ive scrabbled to try to stop The Daily Sceptic and Free Speech Union going under. PayPals software was embedded in all our payment systems, so the sudden closure of our accounts was an existential threat.

In typically murky fashion, PayPal initially gave Young no reason for the bans other than to say that the accounts violated the companys vague acceptable use policy. However, a PayPal spokesperson told the press, Achieving the balance between protecting the ideals of tolerance, diversity and respect for people of all backgrounds and upholding the values of free expression and open dialogue can be difficult, but we do our best to achieve it. Other reports indicate PayPals decision to close the accounts had to do with alleged COVID-19 misinformation.

As you would expect of any free speech group (including FIRE), the Free Speech Union has defended controversial speakers. After all, it is unpopular and dissenting speech not speech aligned with majority opinion that most needs protection.

The Free Speech Union incident is only the latest in PayPals long history of speech-chilling actions against its users.

One would hope PayPal understands that defending a speakers right to freedom of speech, or defending free speech as a cultural value, is not the same as promoting a speakers underlying views. Or, at a minimum, that PayPal as a payment system shouldnt take it upon itself to be the arbiter of allowable speech.

Even if the Free Speech Union were advocating controversial political views, that shouldnt matter. Whether in the U.K. or the U.S., payment processing companies like PayPal (and its subsidiary Venmo) are not bound by the First Amendment, but there are important reasons these companies shouldnt discriminate against users based on their views, as FIRE explains in a statement issued today:

Access to online payment systems is crucial for the innumerable individuals and organizations that rely on financial support for their expressive activity. Its essential to content creators ability to earn a living, to websites and other businesses ability to raise revenue, to fundraising by political candidates and nonprofit organizations, and to everyday Americans ability to consume content and support causes they believe in. When payment processing services act as political hall monitors or moral arbiters deciding what speech and viewpoints are out of bounds, they present a grave threat to free expression.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes, because a small number of companies dominate the market for online payment processing, they have tremendous power to control the speech environment by turning off the financial spigot for users who express disfavored views or wade into controversial subject matter.

The Free Speech Union incident is only the latest in PayPals long history of speech-chilling actions against its users.

In May, PayPal suspended the accounts of independent media outlets Consortium News and MintPress, both of which have been a source of skeptical reporting about the Russia-Ukraine conflict. One month later, PayPal shut down writer Colin Wrights account shortly after Etsy banned him for selling merchandise that promotes, supports, or glorifies hatred or violence towards protected groups. Wright is a critic of transgender activism, and his merchandise included text like Realitys Last Stand (the name of his Substack site) and Defender of Reality.

Groups like the ACLU and EFF have criticized PayPals lack of transparency and failure to provide due process to users whose accounts are frozen or closed.

PayPals greatest hits on free speech also include suspending WikiLeaks account after the organization released diplomatic cables and warning an ebook distributor to remove certain works of erotic fiction.

Other absurd actions appear to be a result of PayPals reliance on poorly tailored algorithms. For instance, PayPal suspended a user for buying a t-shirt from Isis the heavy metal band (which formed years before the terrorist group rose to prominence).

While PayPal ultimately restored Youngs accounts, there is little reason to believe this would have happened without significant public pushback. What about ordinary users who cannot attract the level of attention and support mustered by the Free Speech Union?

Groups like the ACLU and EFF have criticized PayPals lack of transparency and failure to provide due process to users whose accounts are frozen or closed including giving users detailed notice of the alleged policy violation and a timely and meaningful opportunity to appeal the decision. When Colin Wright sought more information about why he was banned, for example, all PayPal told him was that an attorney or law enforcement officer would need to submit a legal subpoena.

After PayPal reinstated the accounts of the Free Speech Union and The Daily Sceptic, a company spokesman said, PayPal is dedicated to providing safe and affordable financial services to people of all backgrounds with a diversity of views, and we are a strong supporter of freedom of expression and open dialogue.

Thats a welcome sentiment. The question is whether it will actually guide PayPals actions going forward.

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PayPal is no pal to free expression - Foundation for Individual Rights in Education