Re:Of course you were criticised!
on
Mplayer Revisited
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Much amused.
But I cannot say I agree. I find it refreshing that a development team develops a high end program that requires some seriousness of people to use. It is becoming a widespread myth that free software developers are little Tele-tubbie-happy people just sitting on their asses coding for hundreds of idiots that luckilly flock to their mailing lists.
MPlayer is a fantastic program (along with other fantastic media programs running on Linux & Co) so many users want it to work for them. And I think that the MPlayer core team acknowledge that but when you for time number 796 get an email reading 'I problem compiling, Please help!!! Is it bug?' with no log or dump... well the coding gets sour. So I can understand that criticism is difficult to take. Especially when it seems as unfounded as the first review.
No, they just want to make a friggin' tarball. Without reading through a godawful horribly formatted man page...
Ahh, but is that not the very nature of Un*x command line tools, that you have to know them? When people open up a terminal and ask me about making tarballs, I invariably explain the ins and outs of what I tell them to type. In my opinion, they absolutely need to know unless it is the last tarball they will ever touch.
Plus, I think you are being unfair to man pages. They were born that way, they cannot help it.:-)
"Second CPU? Why do I need that? Last time I checked there weren't any games that take advantage of multi-processor systems"
I don't mean this in a bad way but you just labelled yourself in a big way. That sort of remark only invites snide remarks from Apple users.
Now there's no accounting for taste, nor is there any point in arguing about it. What I like, others may not. I happen to like Apple computers because they seem to be a bit more for "grown-ups" than there PC counterparts; but that is my own opinion and I have no right to bash others for feeling otherwise.
I could very easily list all the things that I abhore about Dell computers. Some of them would even be objective. But the truth is, I own both a Latitude and a Powerbook. Which I prefer to use or recommend is a personal matter. When people ask which one they should buy I meticulously list what I like and dislike about both of them, and let them make up their own minds.
I'm surprised that something similar hasn't been attempted with Linux.
I looked into having a stab at it once, since tomsrtbt runs off Linux 2.2 (which is too old for my hardware). After a few hours of compiling and tweaking a 2.4 kernel I understood why. It seemed impossible to compile one of a reasonable size. There was no way I could fit anything decent on a single floppy in the way of some networking apps running directly on a small framebuffer window system.
Linux is not really bloated, although the foot-print has grown somewhat. It is just not meant to be that small. QNX was/is since it is designed from the bottom up to be an embedded OS.
No offence, honestly, but why do you feel the need to say "Matrix Reloaded was perhaps the worst movie I've seen in years", rather than say, I personally disliked this movie more than any I have seen for years ?
I happened to like both Matrix films. A lot. And man, all the Matrix bashing is just putting me off.
There is an old saying that one should call a shovel a shovel and a spade a spade.
I think it is fine that people, who know what Unix(tm) is to call everything "Unix" but it gets confusing for those not well-versed in computer science history. Personally, I like calling things by their actual names. For instance, MacOS X does not smell a whole lot like Mandrake to me.
One footnote stood out: ...there is no such thing as intellectual property in the Open Source world, since all code must be open to the view of the user, who is free to modify the
code...
Mr Asay has one or two good points. These are methodically buried in a series of categorical statements like the one above. He proffers statements that are clearly inaccurate or directly false. He has made his research, but evidently not understood what it was about.
Consider this sentence, "The GPL turns all of this on its head. Not only does the GPL remove the property right (or, at least, the ability to profit from it), the GPL skews the definition of "common good" for which copyright and patents provide. That is, the GPL focuses on developers, rather than the end user." Aha. And everybody who ever installed RedHat is a developer? I think not. End users benefit hugely from using Free Software, in that they never have to be nervous about EvilEmpirism. For the man on the street, Open Source is like playing with an open deck of cards. You might not understand the game but at least the on-lookers can see if your opponent is cheating.
I am sorry to say, that Matt Asay has shredded his credibiliy with me. He seems intelligent enough but a paper can only have so many blatant blunders before the reader loses respect completely.
I don''t think they didn't know about freeware. If you've seen your fair share of arguments, you'd know that people often like to use truth, in thier own demented way. My fist thought on this was that they intentionally left those stats in just to have thier own corporate way.
Oh, I'd think that it is even more fundamental than that. The truth is that people who work in trying to uphold the Church of Money(tm) know very well that free software exists but usually they try to ignore the fact among themselves, because whenever they talk about it they get into the kind of heated frenzies that end up in keynote speeches about how people's freedom is harmful to the economy... And it is always so embarrassing afterwards.
When you are trying to compile statistics like this, uncontrollable elements like Free Software are extremely scary. And in biz-SW, it's all about control.
This is not meant to flame but ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MINDS? Python is the most braindead language I have ever seen. Reminds me of Miranda but with crappy type system and programs are three times as long as there Perl equivelants.
Of all the languages to build into an office suite (IMHO) python would be the worst. Maybe just beaten by UniCOMAL.
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Much amused.
But I cannot say I agree. I find it refreshing that a development team develops a high end program that requires some seriousness of people to use. It is becoming a widespread myth that free software developers are little Tele-tubbie-happy people just sitting on their asses coding for hundreds of idiots that luckilly flock to their mailing lists.
MPlayer is a fantastic program (along with other fantastic media programs running on Linux & Co) so many users want it to work for them. And I think that the MPlayer core team acknowledge that but when you for time number 796 get an email reading 'I problem compiling, Please help!!! Is it bug?' with no log or dump... well the coding gets sour. So I can understand that criticism is difficult to take. Especially when it seems as unfounded as the first review.
No, they just want to make a friggin' tarball. Without reading through a godawful horribly formatted man page...
:-)
Ahh, but is that not the very nature of Un*x command line tools, that you have to know them? When people open up a terminal and ask me about making tarballs, I invariably explain the ins and outs of what I tell them to type. In my opinion, they absolutely need to know unless it is the last tarball they will ever touch.
Plus, I think you are being unfair to man pages. They were born that way, they cannot help it.
OSER could be to Exchange what Samba is to an NT fileserver.
'nuff said.
I don't mean this in a bad way but you just labelled yourself in a big way. That sort of remark only invites snide remarks from Apple users.
Now there's no accounting for taste, nor is there any point in arguing about it. What I like, others may not. I happen to like Apple computers because they seem to be a bit more for "grown-ups" than there PC counterparts; but that is my own opinion and I have no right to bash others for feeling otherwise.
I could very easily list all the things that I abhore about Dell computers. Some of them would even be objective. But the truth is, I own both a Latitude and a Powerbook. Which I prefer to use or recommend is a personal matter. When people ask which one they should buy I meticulously list what I like and dislike about both of them, and let them make up their own minds.
I'm surprised that something similar hasn't been attempted with Linux.
I looked into having a stab at it once, since tomsrtbt runs off Linux 2.2 (which is too old for my hardware). After a few hours of compiling and tweaking a 2.4 kernel I understood why. It seemed impossible to compile one of a reasonable size. There was no way I could fit anything decent on a single floppy in the way of some networking apps running directly on a small framebuffer window system.
Linux is not really bloated, although the foot-print has grown somewhat. It is just not meant to be that small. QNX was/is since it is designed from the bottom up to be an embedded OS.
No offence, honestly, but why do you feel the need to say "Matrix Reloaded was perhaps the worst movie I've seen in years", rather than say, I personally disliked this movie more than any I have seen for years ? I happened to like both Matrix films. A lot. And man, all the Matrix bashing is just putting me off.
Hmmm, you know the world is really running fast when they already invented your zaney ideas.
Nah, the Most-Pointless-Thing-Ever award still goes to inventor of the Helicopter Catapult Seat.
:-)
There is an old saying that one should call a shovel a shovel and a spade a spade.
I think it is fine that people, who know what Unix(tm) is to call everything "Unix" but it gets confusing for those not well-versed in computer science history. Personally, I like calling things by their actual names. For instance, MacOS X does not smell a whole lot like Mandrake to me.
One footnote stood out:
...there is no such thing as intellectual property in the Open Source world, since all code must be open to the view of the user, who is free to modify the
code...
Mr Asay has one or two good points. These are methodically buried in a series of categorical statements like the one above. He proffers statements that are clearly inaccurate or directly false. He has made his research, but evidently not understood what it was about.
Consider this sentence, "The GPL turns all of this on its head. Not only does the GPL remove the property right (or, at least, the ability to profit from it), the GPL skews the definition of "common good" for which copyright and patents provide. That is, the GPL focuses on developers, rather than the end user." Aha. And everybody who ever installed RedHat is a developer? I think not. End users benefit hugely from using Free Software, in that they never have to be nervous about EvilEmpirism. For the man on the street, Open Source is like playing with an open deck of cards. You might not understand the game but at least the on-lookers can see if your opponent is cheating.
I am sorry to say, that Matt Asay has shredded his credibiliy with me. He seems intelligent enough but a paper can only have so many blatant blunders before the reader loses respect completely.
I don''t think they didn't know about freeware. If you've seen your fair share of arguments, you'd know that people often like to use truth, in thier own demented way. My fist thought on this was that they intentionally left those stats in just to have thier own corporate way.
Oh, I'd think that it is even more fundamental than that. The truth is that people who work in trying to uphold the Church of Money(tm) know very well that free software exists but usually they try to ignore the fact among themselves, because whenever they talk about it they get into the kind of heated frenzies that end up in keynote speeches about how people's freedom is harmful to the economy... And it is always so embarrassing afterwards.
When you are trying to compile statistics like this, uncontrollable elements like Free Software are extremely scary. And in biz-SW, it's all about control.
This is not meant to flame but ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MINDS? Python is the most braindead language I have ever seen. Reminds me of Miranda but with crappy type system and programs are three times as long as there Perl equivelants.
Of all the languages to build into an office suite (IMHO) python would be the worst. Maybe just beaten by UniCOMAL.