I imagine there will be an option in the deployment settings (which were also added with this release, I believe) to allow unsigned applets to run. As for Java running in a VM providing sufficient security, I'm going to have to disagree. Java security exploits have been responsible for a whole lot of malware over the years; in fact, it's one of the most common ways for malware to propagate. I think it's pretty clear by now that whatever security benefits the JVM might have once held are no longer a factor.
Roger Grimes over at InfoWorld has an excellent security column and Java security has been one of his biggest gripes for a long time (example). This will be great for anyone who doesn't stay on top of patching (and also good for those who do, to a lesser extent). The newest release of Java also allows for finer grain security control, something that's been missing for years. I think Oracle's finally starting to try and seriously tackle Java security. Besides, "casual Java" use (at least for in-browser applets, which this seems to be about) isn't really that common anymore anyway (most of it's Flash now) and it's a small sacrifice to make for greatly increased security.
Oh, is that so? Because it seems to me like that's a pretty awful generalization. There are plenty of us who are well aware of both of those things you've claimed we've all lost sight of. The problem is that there's not much we can reasonably do to remedy it. An individual might be able to make an impact... if he or she sacrifices his or her whole life to the cause. And even then, it's probably not going to make much of a difference, if any. I do what I can within reason; I vote Green at every election and make sure people around me know I think both major parties are, by and large, corrupt pigs. But anything past that, the cost/benefit ratio is going to become infinitesimally small. If you've got a suggestion about something that actually has a chance in hell of working that people can actually do to fight this, spit it out. Because telling us we've "lost sight of the constitution" isn't true and certainly isn't helping, and I have no idea why you're +4 insightful for it.
Ubuntu did a great job moving usability in GNU/Linux forward, but it's time to let other distros shine, I think. I really like the direction elementary os is taking (though I wish they'd make more information about their system easily available on their website). They even have their own human interface guidelines, which is a great starting point for making a more usable and consistent system. There are a few decisions they made that I'm not fond of, but hopefully those bumps will be ironed out over time. I really hope it takes off; I think it could do a lot for the whole GNU/Linux scene.
The two most commonly mentioned are Cinnamon and Mate, both of which are forks of GNOME (the former of GNOME 3, the latter of GNOME 2). There are also plenty of other popular desktop environments; Xfce is great, LXDE is... improving (especially with the move to Qt), and I hear KDE has improved a lot in the past decade. I'm pretty sure every single one I've mentioned retains this functionality and will. Heck, even Unity will probably retain it. And at this point, with the GNOME devs pretty much doing whatever they want and ignoring any and all criticism, there's little reason to continue to use GNOME. Its dominant position is fading (if not already gone), so even that's out the window, now.
I'm guessing you can do this with non-Steam games, so long as you've launched them through Steam. It sounds like just typical streaming technology, I doubt it requires Steamworks or anything. That said, there are plenty of "AAA titles" available that aren't under the "EA umbrella." Rather, many of the supposed-AAA games from EA lately have been quite the opposite -- more "C" or "D" grade, if you ask me.
I take issue with the idea that a game's story can't be as good as a book's. KotOR 2, Deus Ex, Planescape: Torment, these games all had great stories (and the first two were good games, too, though KotOR 2 was buggy and incomplete). The rest of what you said is pretty accurate, though.
"If you repeat it often enough, it becomes true?"
I've never seen that phrase in action. I've heard a lot of jokes about the state of society, I've never seen people taking them seriously. People are smarter than you give them credit for and most of us are well aware of what is and is not said in seriousness. And on the rare case where someone misinterprets, that's usually pretty easily cleared up. If people started saying such things in seriousness, then that would be the point at which we should start fighting it and you would hear no complaint from me. What you're making is essentially a slippery slope argument.
"I would have no problem if the original comment was along the lines of 'I saw her at the CM booth at a trade show last Spring; I remember this because I was pleasantly surprised to see a female at a booth actually engaging people instead of just standing there as a booth babe.'"
He was going for a joke, this was never going to happen. Maybe something like "I think everyone's missing the point; they have an endangered species on their crew" or something would have been in better taste, yeah. Regardless, I don't think what he said had any negative affect on anyone (other than the reader for reading a dumb and cheap joke).
"This isn't an overreaction; you are just unused to seeing ANY reaction! This stuff happens all the time, and you and others say nothing. It's implicit acceptance and approval of a culture that marginalizes women."
I disagree completely, for several reasons. First, I don't think something said as a joke marginalizes anyone. Second, my refusal to condemn him for it does not mean I accept and approve of the marginalization of women (quite the contrary; I believe a person is not defined by their physical features, but their strength of character, and no other metric should be used to judge people). It means I don't feel that what he said necessitates a harsh response (it wasn't meant to be serious and it is, in my opinion, harmless).
As for what you said at the end, I think you missed my point. I was making a larger point about the attitude of... well, whatever you want to call it, the PC movement, progressives, whatever, that movement in general toward people who disagree. And that is, if you want to influence people who disagree with you, jumping all over their every mistake probably isn't going to do it. If they do something you disagree with but it doesn't seem malicious, engage them in discussion, don't cast a label on them and hold them up as an example of all that is wrong with society. With this particular issue, you're probably not going to win (most people aren't going to be convinced that saying something clearly in jest is going to lead to an actual problem or that, even if it might, it's something that should be fought at this stage and not the later, actually problematic stage). But at the very least, you're not going to give them a reason to dislike you and that's going to make them much more likely to concede on other issues (or, at the very least, not polarize them into the abyss).
I'm sure I'll get modded to oblivion for speaking out against the current PC fad, but I think it's important to fight this sort of overreaction when it crops up.
"This... contributes to an incorrect societal marginalization of women."
How?
"You imply a team like this would only have a woman on their payroll as a sex object."
Yes, God forbid he makes a joke about how seeing a woman in such a position is a rare sight.
"Joking in this way is not OK. It needs to be shut down and shunned by society."
Why, exactly? You make this claim with no justification whatsoever. To me, it just seems like you're taking political correctness too far (and furthermore, bullying him for it). Yes, it was a dumb joke (and should be called out as such), but it was just a joke. I hardly think it's so bad that we need to collectively shun what he said. He's not making any suggestion about how things should be, he's making a joke in poor taste. The defining feature of what he said was that it wasn't meant seriously, and attacking something made in jest as though it wasn't makes you look like someone with a stick up their ass and will deafen people to you (and, moreover, other people who make similar arguments to you) when you point out something actively malicious, like someone seriously suggesting that women shouldn't be in such a role.
I've seen this all happen first-hand on places where I regularly post; the overreaction by society at large to anything perceived as remotely sexist is pushing certain niche communities further and further away from a moderately egalitarian position, and what used to be a group of people who mostly either didn't care and just wanted to pursue their hobby or who generally supported the principles of egalitarianism are now becoming hostile to the entire feminist movement (both the moderate and the extremist parts of it, nobody makes a distinction so they get grouped together) and, by extension, many of the tenets of egalitarianism. If you want to bring these people back over (which I assume is what you and folks like you want; it could well be that you really are just on an ego trip, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt) and convince them that there ARE real problems, then you need to bring them to the table and discuss the real problems with them and not immediately label them as evil, sexist Nazis the moment they disagree with something you say. I know for a fact that some of the concerns folks in these communities have are legitimate and that not everything the PC/feminist movement says should be treated as gospel because there are places where your side is overreaching and there are issues you're ignoring on the flip side. Moreover, you need to stop jumping all over every faux pas they commit (like you just did). You're setting yourself up to be the bad guy to them, and there's nothing that convinces people of their rightness more than a big, evil oppressor trying to kill their culture.
A lot of physical media still requires you to use Steam these days. Valve is dragging us into their vision of a perfect gaming world whether we like it or not. I feel bad for the people who are on the "not" side of that equation; as much as I like Steam, I don't think people should be required to use it for all of the big-name games out there if they don't want to.
"Can you imagine what things would be like if Linux had never happened?"
Most likely, some other free kernel would have ended up getting made and used with GNU. Or perhaps Hurd may have reached fruition (aw, who am I kidding with that, Hurd's not getting finished in ANY universe).
Since you hate ACs so much, let me say this one from the heart: you're the kind of elitist asshole that makes me wish I could punch people through the internet. If you had anything worth saying, you would have said it. You didn't, and that's telling. So fuck off.
Linus isn't a dick, he's just over the top sometimes. This is like going into a bar for bikers and complaining that they're being mean. It's just how they are. That said, I don't really think kdev should have its own closed-off culture you need to learn to participate. If you're trying to attract devs, having a so-called "circlejerk" that comes off as rude is counter-productive to that goal and will only drive people away.
You joke, but once I finished with university and for about six months while I was looking for a job, I couldn't afford internet. I live in Michigan, where we have free dial-up via "Dial In Free," so that's what I used for six months in 2012 (and as a compsci graduate, no less).
For the most part, it was only bearable by using Opera with images disabled (they used to have this nice little feature where you could load an image on demand, very useful). So many sites now have image-based layouts or some fancy markup (like Gmail, but at least they have a lightweight version) that even some of the most basic sites take an hour to load unless you do some sort of selective loading. That's something I didn't have to do back in the 90s. Luckily, IRC still works just fine, and that probably kept me sane.
That's unfair. He could just be new. I'm fantastic with C now, but starting out, I couldn't understand pointers for the life of me. New concepts take time for anyone to learn.
Reminds me of the copy protection on Spyro: Year of the Dragon. It was a layered system, where the first layer was easy to crack, but each time you cracked a layer, another layer cropped up that introduced bugs at some arbitrary point in the game. Fix one bug, you end up introducing another. It was eventually cracked in a rather ingenious way, but it took much longer than any other game at the time.
You're really surprised by that? There's a reason the entertainment industry is booming while groups like Doctors Without Borders have to fight as hard as ever to get the funding they need.
That said, I don't think it's an inherently bad thing. Humanity isn't made of saints, so what? What matters is that a successor to one of the only games I've ever played with worthwhile writing is getting a sequel. People were never going to spend their entertainment money on anything else, so it may as well go to something worthy of it instead of a dumbed-down, DRM-encrusted version of SimCity or some other garbage.
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I imagine there will be an option in the deployment settings (which were also added with this release, I believe) to allow unsigned applets to run. As for Java running in a VM providing sufficient security, I'm going to have to disagree. Java security exploits have been responsible for a whole lot of malware over the years; in fact, it's one of the most common ways for malware to propagate. I think it's pretty clear by now that whatever security benefits the JVM might have once held are no longer a factor.
Roger Grimes over at InfoWorld has an excellent security column and Java security has been one of his biggest gripes for a long time (example). This will be great for anyone who doesn't stay on top of patching (and also good for those who do, to a lesser extent). The newest release of Java also allows for finer grain security control, something that's been missing for years. I think Oracle's finally starting to try and seriously tackle Java security. Besides, "casual Java" use (at least for in-browser applets, which this seems to be about) isn't really that common anymore anyway (most of it's Flash now) and it's a small sacrifice to make for greatly increased security.
God, I wish I had mod points for you right now. I thought I was the only one.
Oh, is that so? Because it seems to me like that's a pretty awful generalization. There are plenty of us who are well aware of both of those things you've claimed we've all lost sight of. The problem is that there's not much we can reasonably do to remedy it. An individual might be able to make an impact... if he or she sacrifices his or her whole life to the cause. And even then, it's probably not going to make much of a difference, if any. I do what I can within reason; I vote Green at every election and make sure people around me know I think both major parties are, by and large, corrupt pigs. But anything past that, the cost/benefit ratio is going to become infinitesimally small. If you've got a suggestion about something that actually has a chance in hell of working that people can actually do to fight this, spit it out. Because telling us we've "lost sight of the constitution" isn't true and certainly isn't helping, and I have no idea why you're +4 insightful for it.
Ubuntu did a great job moving usability in GNU/Linux forward, but it's time to let other distros shine, I think. I really like the direction elementary os is taking (though I wish they'd make more information about their system easily available on their website). They even have their own human interface guidelines, which is a great starting point for making a more usable and consistent system. There are a few decisions they made that I'm not fond of, but hopefully those bumps will be ironed out over time. I really hope it takes off; I think it could do a lot for the whole GNU/Linux scene.
LXDE is moving to Qt.
The two most commonly mentioned are Cinnamon and Mate, both of which are forks of GNOME (the former of GNOME 3, the latter of GNOME 2). There are also plenty of other popular desktop environments; Xfce is great, LXDE is... improving (especially with the move to Qt), and I hear KDE has improved a lot in the past decade. I'm pretty sure every single one I've mentioned retains this functionality and will. Heck, even Unity will probably retain it. And at this point, with the GNOME devs pretty much doing whatever they want and ignoring any and all criticism, there's little reason to continue to use GNOME. Its dominant position is fading (if not already gone), so even that's out the window, now.
I'm guessing you can do this with non-Steam games, so long as you've launched them through Steam. It sounds like just typical streaming technology, I doubt it requires Steamworks or anything. That said, there are plenty of "AAA titles" available that aren't under the "EA umbrella." Rather, many of the supposed-AAA games from EA lately have been quite the opposite -- more "C" or "D" grade, if you ask me.
I take issue with the idea that a game's story can't be as good as a book's. KotOR 2, Deus Ex, Planescape: Torment, these games all had great stories (and the first two were good games, too, though KotOR 2 was buggy and incomplete). The rest of what you said is pretty accurate, though.
"If you repeat it often enough, it becomes true?"
I've never seen that phrase in action. I've heard a lot of jokes about the state of society, I've never seen people taking them seriously. People are smarter than you give them credit for and most of us are well aware of what is and is not said in seriousness. And on the rare case where someone misinterprets, that's usually pretty easily cleared up. If people started saying such things in seriousness, then that would be the point at which we should start fighting it and you would hear no complaint from me. What you're making is essentially a slippery slope argument.
"I would have no problem if the original comment was along the lines of 'I saw her at the CM booth at a trade show last Spring; I remember this because I was pleasantly surprised to see a female at a booth actually engaging people instead of just standing there as a booth babe.'"
He was going for a joke, this was never going to happen. Maybe something like "I think everyone's missing the point; they have an endangered species on their crew" or something would have been in better taste, yeah. Regardless, I don't think what he said had any negative affect on anyone (other than the reader for reading a dumb and cheap joke).
"This isn't an overreaction; you are just unused to seeing ANY reaction! This stuff happens all the time, and you and others say nothing. It's implicit acceptance and approval of a culture that marginalizes women."
I disagree completely, for several reasons. First, I don't think something said as a joke marginalizes anyone. Second, my refusal to condemn him for it does not mean I accept and approve of the marginalization of women (quite the contrary; I believe a person is not defined by their physical features, but their strength of character, and no other metric should be used to judge people). It means I don't feel that what he said necessitates a harsh response (it wasn't meant to be serious and it is, in my opinion, harmless).
As for what you said at the end, I think you missed my point. I was making a larger point about the attitude of... well, whatever you want to call it, the PC movement, progressives, whatever, that movement in general toward people who disagree. And that is, if you want to influence people who disagree with you, jumping all over their every mistake probably isn't going to do it. If they do something you disagree with but it doesn't seem malicious, engage them in discussion, don't cast a label on them and hold them up as an example of all that is wrong with society. With this particular issue, you're probably not going to win (most people aren't going to be convinced that saying something clearly in jest is going to lead to an actual problem or that, even if it might, it's something that should be fought at this stage and not the later, actually problematic stage). But at the very least, you're not going to give them a reason to dislike you and that's going to make them much more likely to concede on other issues (or, at the very least, not polarize them into the abyss).
I'm sure I'll get modded to oblivion for speaking out against the current PC fad, but I think it's important to fight this sort of overreaction when it crops up.
"This... contributes to an incorrect societal marginalization of women."
How?
"You imply a team like this would only have a woman on their payroll as a sex object."
Yes, God forbid he makes a joke about how seeing a woman in such a position is a rare sight.
"Joking in this way is not OK. It needs to be shut down and shunned by society."
Why, exactly? You make this claim with no justification whatsoever. To me, it just seems like you're taking political correctness too far (and furthermore, bullying him for it). Yes, it was a dumb joke (and should be called out as such), but it was just a joke. I hardly think it's so bad that we need to collectively shun what he said. He's not making any suggestion about how things should be, he's making a joke in poor taste. The defining feature of what he said was that it wasn't meant seriously, and attacking something made in jest as though it wasn't makes you look like someone with a stick up their ass and will deafen people to you (and, moreover, other people who make similar arguments to you) when you point out something actively malicious, like someone seriously suggesting that women shouldn't be in such a role.
I've seen this all happen first-hand on places where I regularly post; the overreaction by society at large to anything perceived as remotely sexist is pushing certain niche communities further and further away from a moderately egalitarian position, and what used to be a group of people who mostly either didn't care and just wanted to pursue their hobby or who generally supported the principles of egalitarianism are now becoming hostile to the entire feminist movement (both the moderate and the extremist parts of it, nobody makes a distinction so they get grouped together) and, by extension, many of the tenets of egalitarianism. If you want to bring these people back over (which I assume is what you and folks like you want; it could well be that you really are just on an ego trip, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt) and convince them that there ARE real problems, then you need to bring them to the table and discuss the real problems with them and not immediately label them as evil, sexist Nazis the moment they disagree with something you say. I know for a fact that some of the concerns folks in these communities have are legitimate and that not everything the PC/feminist movement says should be treated as gospel because there are places where your side is overreaching and there are issues you're ignoring on the flip side. Moreover, you need to stop jumping all over every faux pas they commit (like you just did). You're setting yourself up to be the bad guy to them, and there's nothing that convinces people of their rightness more than a big, evil oppressor trying to kill their culture.
A lot of physical media still requires you to use Steam these days. Valve is dragging us into their vision of a perfect gaming world whether we like it or not. I feel bad for the people who are on the "not" side of that equation; as much as I like Steam, I don't think people should be required to use it for all of the big-name games out there if they don't want to.
"Can you imagine what things would be like if Linux had never happened?"
Most likely, some other free kernel would have ended up getting made and used with GNU. Or perhaps Hurd may have reached fruition (aw, who am I kidding with that, Hurd's not getting finished in ANY universe).
Since you hate ACs so much, let me say this one from the heart: you're the kind of elitist asshole that makes me wish I could punch people through the internet. If you had anything worth saying, you would have said it. You didn't, and that's telling. So fuck off.
Linus isn't a dick, he's just over the top sometimes. This is like going into a bar for bikers and complaining that they're being mean. It's just how they are. That said, I don't really think kdev should have its own closed-off culture you need to learn to participate. If you're trying to attract devs, having a so-called "circlejerk" that comes off as rude is counter-productive to that goal and will only drive people away.
You joke, but once I finished with university and for about six months while I was looking for a job, I couldn't afford internet. I live in Michigan, where we have free dial-up via "Dial In Free," so that's what I used for six months in 2012 (and as a compsci graduate, no less).
For the most part, it was only bearable by using Opera with images disabled (they used to have this nice little feature where you could load an image on demand, very useful). So many sites now have image-based layouts or some fancy markup (like Gmail, but at least they have a lightweight version) that even some of the most basic sites take an hour to load unless you do some sort of selective loading. That's something I didn't have to do back in the 90s. Luckily, IRC still works just fine, and that probably kept me sane.
That's unfair. He could just be new. I'm fantastic with C now, but starting out, I couldn't understand pointers for the life of me. New concepts take time for anyone to learn.
Sorry, my mistake. He was not the founder of FreeBSD. I don't know where I got that idea.
OpenBSD was a fork made by the founder of FreeBSD and it's arguably better than FreeBSD in several major ways.
No.
Reminds me of the copy protection on Spyro: Year of the Dragon. It was a layered system, where the first layer was easy to crack, but each time you cracked a layer, another layer cropped up that introduced bugs at some arbitrary point in the game. Fix one bug, you end up introducing another. It was eventually cracked in a rather ingenious way, but it took much longer than any other game at the time.
And yet SimCity hasn't been cracked yet. Who are they going to blame this time?
You're really surprised by that? There's a reason the entertainment industry is booming while groups like Doctors Without Borders have to fight as hard as ever to get the funding they need.
That said, I don't think it's an inherently bad thing. Humanity isn't made of saints, so what? What matters is that a successor to one of the only games I've ever played with worthwhile writing is getting a sequel. People were never going to spend their entertainment money on anything else, so it may as well go to something worthy of it instead of a dumbed-down, DRM-encrusted version of SimCity or some other garbage.
HAH!
They're coming soon. Maybe you should think twice about opening the door.