Of all the distributions I've seen, Elementary seems to be the best in terms of UI. They've got a sensible set of human interface guidelines that are very easy to find and pretty much everything on there by default seems to work exactly how you would expect it to. I'm a big fan and am looking forward to their next release.
That sounds like PEBKAC to me. He probably had a poorly configured Apache setup. I don't really have the qualifications to give an informed opinion about the state of OpenBSD security, but pretty much everything I do know points to very good practices on their part. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it seems to be head and shoulders above a lot of other systems.
I actually asked a similar question on the #openbsd Freenode channel a while back and got a pretty good response. Basically, RPi is a crapshoot. It's very poorly documented and there's a lot of proprietary crud that's a pain in the neck to develop for. It's been brought up a lot on the mailing list and discussed there, so I recommend searching through it for those discussions.
I got recommended several alternatives, but the one that seemed to come up most often was Alix. I was also told they're coming out with a new model sometime early this year, so I'm waiting for that before I buy (if anyone has more info on that, I'd be happy to hear).
Assuming what you said is 100% true, then yeah, I agree that he was probably too quick to dismiss your proposal (then again, I'm no expert). That said, I think it's a bit overboard to dismiss the entire OS because of that. OpenBSD has a very strong focus on security and stability. There are a lot of people, myself included, who care very much about those things, even at the expense of, say, optimization.
I see a lot of people say Theo's a jackass. I don't know if that's true or not, and frankly, I don't care. OpenBSD has a clear philosophy and focus and the team behind it, however they may act, have done a fantastic job at maintaining that focus and working toward building a better product in that vein. Maybe they would benefit from a little humility, maybe they wouldn't, but as long as they keep pumping out a system that improves upon the goals they've established (goals that I value extremely highly), I'm willing to let attitude problems slide.
That's not true. In fact, it often takes a sufficiently large amount of any sort of harmful parasite to make you sick from oral ingestion, if only because your stomach acid is going to kill a large amount. So killing 99% of bacterial pathogens in a water source is actually pretty useful.
Here's a personal favorite of mine. Metapad LE as a drop-in notepad.exe replacement. It's basically a more fully featured notepad that loads equally as fast. Differences on LE/full version here if you care.
I guess I should finish reading the post before responding. I missed that you said that support is out. So I think in your case, I can recommend maybe trying crowdfunding for features additions and possibly some bugfixes.
(was going to post this one AC, but I'm still on cooldown)
I think I might be able to provide a bit of an answer to this. I know of two ways (I'm sure there are more) to monetize production of free software. First, there's the Red Hat way: monetize support. If your product is sufficiently complex, this is probably the obvious choice. Otherwise, there's been a recent trend toward crowdfunding new features and certain lower-priority bugfixes. This might be an option for you if your program is something you anticipate a decent number of people using.
RMS might have something more to say, but this is just my two cents on the issue.
To start with, no, not all games are designed for the "testosterone-fueled male intellect." If that's what you think, you only have exposure to the ultra-popular games (and they're ultra-popular because the testosterone-fueled male intellect has a lot of money). If you want games for whatever other crowd (I'm guessing women, since it's the general topic of discussion), you're going to need to make a persuasive argument as to why a profit-seeking entity should bother with you and, furthermore, come to the discussion table and talk to people about what you want and how to do it without sacrificing what other people want and what the game is about. Regarding the first part (I'll touch on the second part later), game devs and publishers are, nine times out of ten, ultimately looking to make money. Games for "girls," while often being misguided and pretty blatantly offensive to begin with, tend to sell very poorly. The largest and most lucrative audience is the male gamer, 18-24, who is influenced by his peers. So the big-money games tend to be targeted toward that crowd. There's a bit of a negative feedback loop going on: women tend to be less interested in games in general, and this results in game developers not making a concerted effort to make games that would appeal to them, thus strengthening the general disinterest in games by that audience.
That said, creators often create what they know. Most game devs grew up surrounded by the last generation of gaming culture: D&D, point-and-clicks, Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, etc. That kind of thing shows through in a lot of games. Speaking generally, women weren't really a part of that culture to any significant degree. Modern devs really have no idea how to make a game appeal to women, especially in the context of everything else they're trying to do with their game. Devs usually make what they know they would like (provided the game's not being written by committee for that college bro gamer market). If you want these games to be designed in a way that appeals more to you, you're first going to have to educate people on what it is you want that's different from what's available: what you think is fun and interesting, why and how it's different from what's offered, etc. And, of course, you're going to need to be able to sell it, because, as mentioned, ultimately the goal is money. People might give your ideas a chance if they make sense, but they better pay off.
I am a part of a specific gaming community that largely opposes a lot of the "we're not appealing to X enough" mentality that's starting to become pervasive in the modern discussion about games. Speaking for others here, and not myself, a lot of people are afraid that this whole mentality's going to ruin what has produced fantastic games in the past. People in the community I am part of are afraid that there won't be that next Planescape: Torment, that there won't be the next Myst, or Half-Life 2, or Metroid Prime, or whatever. They're afraid that all games are going to be designed specifically to pander to some particular market segment (women or not). That's the fear, and it's what causes the hostility. Personally, I don't think it'll ever be so bad that it prevents good works from showing up. It's true that there is some pandering going on to that 18-24 "testosterone gamer" crowd as mentioned earlier, and publishers are starting to direct devs to pander to other crowds, but there are still good games being made for the sake of being good games. I don't think this pandering mentality is ever going to become the one and only force in game design to the complete detriment of creative expression. I would like the discussion to get away from this whole "we need to be inclusive of everyone" mentality, though. I think some people are starting to losing sight of what makes a really good game.
Anyway, that last part was a bit of a tangent. What I'm trying to say is that a lot of the hostility you're seeing from certain people comes from a fear of losing what they love. If you have this good thing g
If you like SMAC, may I recommend Planetfall? It's an attempt to do SMAC in Civilization 4. It's pretty good, it's missing some of the better parts, but I do like it.
It's because the "internet of things" is a terrible idea that, for a very marginal benefit, opens up tons of things to security issues where before there were none. Also, I'm not a cyborg.
Then they'll just start putting scapegoats in charge of the company while the board becomes a secret group within the company. Anything goes wrong, just replace the scapegoat.
If you'd like a specific example, OpenBSD. They were recently facing major problems because none of the corporations that took from their project were willing to give back where it was needed most. Granted, monetary issues aren't something the GPL is going to solve, but I'm speaking more generally to the larger point of "corporations will give back when it suits their interest." At least in this case, it seems like most corporations that "took" from OpenBSD figured that it wasn't their problem, that someone else would give back and they could just reap the profits. And really, that's what ended up happening (I believe a rich user ended up stepping up and covering their electrical costs).
Hey, I liked your post when I saw it, enough so that I even put it in my signature. But I think you're overreacting. He's an idiot or misunderstood or something, but that doesn't mean you should jump all over him in an unrelated comment thread.
He didn't say they should stop selling iOS devices, he said they should start selling Android devices as well. Your post seems to be predicated on the idea that Woz thinks they should stop selling iOS devices, which he never said. But maybe I misunderstood you.
Can you or someone at least acknowledge that some of the concerns listed in the feedback article are being addressed? The one I see most commonly is that the beta makes very inefficient use of space (especially vertical space); an acknowledgement that this and some of the other problems are actually being worked on would at least make me feel a bit better (I can't speak for others, I think at this point even if all of the problems were fixed, there would still be people complaining).
I don't know what your beef seems to be with anonymous posting. Why not try judging people based on the content of what they post instead of what name they chose to post under? If you have a problem with the content of a post, then say that. Choosing to post anonymously or not has nothing to do with whether someone has something legitimate to say or not other than there might be a few more off-topic AC posts (and even that's not exclusive, there are plenty of off-topic and silly posts coming from non-ACs).
This is incorrect, as one of the other children to this post said. Stallman, and moreover the entire FSF, has no problem with selling free libre software. In fact, preventing someone from using software for commercial gains would violate freedom 0 (the freedom to use the software for any purpose), as it is a restriction on usage. I really don't get why people keep bringing up this myth that RMS is opposed to commercial interests, as I've never seen a shred of evidence to substantiate it. Maybe I'm wrong and he really does hate commercial interests on principle, but at the very least it doesn't show in the GPL.
Slashdot Mirror
Of all the distributions I've seen, Elementary seems to be the best in terms of UI. They've got a sensible set of human interface guidelines that are very easy to find and pretty much everything on there by default seems to work exactly how you would expect it to. I'm a big fan and am looking forward to their next release.
That sounds like PEBKAC to me. He probably had a poorly configured Apache setup. I don't really have the qualifications to give an informed opinion about the state of OpenBSD security, but pretty much everything I do know points to very good practices on their part. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it seems to be head and shoulders above a lot of other systems.
I actually asked a similar question on the #openbsd Freenode channel a while back and got a pretty good response. Basically, RPi is a crapshoot. It's very poorly documented and there's a lot of proprietary crud that's a pain in the neck to develop for. It's been brought up a lot on the mailing list and discussed there, so I recommend searching through it for those discussions.
I got recommended several alternatives, but the one that seemed to come up most often was Alix. I was also told they're coming out with a new model sometime early this year, so I'm waiting for that before I buy (if anyone has more info on that, I'd be happy to hear).
Assuming what you said is 100% true, then yeah, I agree that he was probably too quick to dismiss your proposal (then again, I'm no expert). That said, I think it's a bit overboard to dismiss the entire OS because of that. OpenBSD has a very strong focus on security and stability. There are a lot of people, myself included, who care very much about those things, even at the expense of, say, optimization.
I see a lot of people say Theo's a jackass. I don't know if that's true or not, and frankly, I don't care. OpenBSD has a clear philosophy and focus and the team behind it, however they may act, have done a fantastic job at maintaining that focus and working toward building a better product in that vein. Maybe they would benefit from a little humility, maybe they wouldn't, but as long as they keep pumping out a system that improves upon the goals they've established (goals that I value extremely highly), I'm willing to let attitude problems slide.
That's not true. In fact, it often takes a sufficiently large amount of any sort of harmful parasite to make you sick from oral ingestion, if only because your stomach acid is going to kill a large amount. So killing 99% of bacterial pathogens in a water source is actually pretty useful.
Here's a personal favorite of mine. Metapad LE as a drop-in notepad.exe replacement. It's basically a more fully featured notepad that loads equally as fast. Differences on LE/full version here if you care.
I guess I should finish reading the post before responding. I missed that you said that support is out. So I think in your case, I can recommend maybe trying crowdfunding for features additions and possibly some bugfixes.
(was going to post this one AC, but I'm still on cooldown)
I think I might be able to provide a bit of an answer to this. I know of two ways (I'm sure there are more) to monetize production of free software. First, there's the Red Hat way: monetize support. If your product is sufficiently complex, this is probably the obvious choice. Otherwise, there's been a recent trend toward crowdfunding new features and certain lower-priority bugfixes. This might be an option for you if your program is something you anticipate a decent number of people using.
RMS might have something more to say, but this is just my two cents on the issue.
To start with, no, not all games are designed for the "testosterone-fueled male intellect." If that's what you think, you only have exposure to the ultra-popular games (and they're ultra-popular because the testosterone-fueled male intellect has a lot of money). If you want games for whatever other crowd (I'm guessing women, since it's the general topic of discussion), you're going to need to make a persuasive argument as to why a profit-seeking entity should bother with you and, furthermore, come to the discussion table and talk to people about what you want and how to do it without sacrificing what other people want and what the game is about. Regarding the first part (I'll touch on the second part later), game devs and publishers are, nine times out of ten, ultimately looking to make money. Games for "girls," while often being misguided and pretty blatantly offensive to begin with, tend to sell very poorly. The largest and most lucrative audience is the male gamer, 18-24, who is influenced by his peers. So the big-money games tend to be targeted toward that crowd. There's a bit of a negative feedback loop going on: women tend to be less interested in games in general, and this results in game developers not making a concerted effort to make games that would appeal to them, thus strengthening the general disinterest in games by that audience.
That said, creators often create what they know. Most game devs grew up surrounded by the last generation of gaming culture: D&D, point-and-clicks, Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, etc. That kind of thing shows through in a lot of games. Speaking generally, women weren't really a part of that culture to any significant degree. Modern devs really have no idea how to make a game appeal to women, especially in the context of everything else they're trying to do with their game. Devs usually make what they know they would like (provided the game's not being written by committee for that college bro gamer market). If you want these games to be designed in a way that appeals more to you, you're first going to have to educate people on what it is you want that's different from what's available: what you think is fun and interesting, why and how it's different from what's offered, etc. And, of course, you're going to need to be able to sell it, because, as mentioned, ultimately the goal is money. People might give your ideas a chance if they make sense, but they better pay off.
I am a part of a specific gaming community that largely opposes a lot of the "we're not appealing to X enough" mentality that's starting to become pervasive in the modern discussion about games. Speaking for others here, and not myself, a lot of people are afraid that this whole mentality's going to ruin what has produced fantastic games in the past. People in the community I am part of are afraid that there won't be that next Planescape: Torment, that there won't be the next Myst, or Half-Life 2, or Metroid Prime, or whatever. They're afraid that all games are going to be designed specifically to pander to some particular market segment (women or not). That's the fear, and it's what causes the hostility. Personally, I don't think it'll ever be so bad that it prevents good works from showing up. It's true that there is some pandering going on to that 18-24 "testosterone gamer" crowd as mentioned earlier, and publishers are starting to direct devs to pander to other crowds, but there are still good games being made for the sake of being good games. I don't think this pandering mentality is ever going to become the one and only force in game design to the complete detriment of creative expression. I would like the discussion to get away from this whole "we need to be inclusive of everyone" mentality, though. I think some people are starting to losing sight of what makes a really good game.
Anyway, that last part was a bit of a tangent. What I'm trying to say is that a lot of the hostility you're seeing from certain people comes from a fear of losing what they love. If you have this good thing g
If you like SMAC, may I recommend Planetfall? It's an attempt to do SMAC in Civilization 4. It's pretty good, it's missing some of the better parts, but I do like it.
It's because the "internet of things" is a terrible idea that, for a very marginal benefit, opens up tons of things to security issues where before there were none. Also, I'm not a cyborg.
Like what, specifically? Not doubting, just curious.
The first one was definitely a typo, as he correctly says UDP earlier in his post.
Then they'll just start putting scapegoats in charge of the company while the board becomes a secret group within the company. Anything goes wrong, just replace the scapegoat.
If you'd like a specific example, OpenBSD. They were recently facing major problems because none of the corporations that took from their project were willing to give back where it was needed most. Granted, monetary issues aren't something the GPL is going to solve, but I'm speaking more generally to the larger point of "corporations will give back when it suits their interest." At least in this case, it seems like most corporations that "took" from OpenBSD figured that it wasn't their problem, that someone else would give back and they could just reap the profits. And really, that's what ended up happening (I believe a rich user ended up stepping up and covering their electrical costs).
Hey, I liked your post when I saw it, enough so that I even put it in my signature. But I think you're overreacting. He's an idiot or misunderstood or something, but that doesn't mean you should jump all over him in an unrelated comment thread.
There are several ways around it. The link in my sig uses hosts file redirection, but I've heard some people have luck doing things other ways.
He didn't say they should stop selling iOS devices, he said they should start selling Android devices as well. Your post seems to be predicated on the idea that Woz thinks they should stop selling iOS devices, which he never said. But maybe I misunderstood you.
Can you or someone at least acknowledge that some of the concerns listed in the feedback article are being addressed? The one I see most commonly is that the beta makes very inefficient use of space (especially vertical space); an acknowledgement that this and some of the other problems are actually being worked on would at least make me feel a bit better (I can't speak for others, I think at this point even if all of the problems were fixed, there would still be people complaining).
I don't know what your beef seems to be with anonymous posting. Why not try judging people based on the content of what they post instead of what name they chose to post under? If you have a problem with the content of a post, then say that. Choosing to post anonymously or not has nothing to do with whether someone has something legitimate to say or not other than there might be a few more off-topic AC posts (and even that's not exclusive, there are plenty of off-topic and silly posts coming from non-ACs).
I think I had a better idea.
I think I vomited in my mouth a little at that link. My laptop's fan came on just from opening it. Ugh.
You mention the "GUILE license." I can't find what you're talking about. Here's the licensing info for GNU Guile.
I'm curious: what do your lawyers think about LGPL (2 and 3)?
This is incorrect, as one of the other children to this post said. Stallman, and moreover the entire FSF, has no problem with selling free libre software. In fact, preventing someone from using software for commercial gains would violate freedom 0 (the freedom to use the software for any purpose), as it is a restriction on usage. I really don't get why people keep bringing up this myth that RMS is opposed to commercial interests, as I've never seen a shred of evidence to substantiate it. Maybe I'm wrong and he really does hate commercial interests on principle, but at the very least it doesn't show in the GPL.