You could learn to do cryptic crosswords. Most clues are modelled around a handful of patterns; general knowledge is a barrier, but you can allow yourself Wikipedia.
Your grandma could learn to program; it might not be worth it, depending on her age and ambitions.
All of these skills are learnt, learning takes time, and it's an opportunity cost. If I'd spent less time learning to code, I might have spent it learning to draw, or practising guitar, and I'd be better at those things. That's not about mental ability; it's about choice of specialisation.
I'm not sure he knows what he's asking for, but I think I know what might address his concerns, and it's basically more embedded languages in apps that people use.
Lots of people learned simple procedural programming with Word/Excel macros. Record a macro, look at the code generated, amend it. Now some people do it with VBA, but I'd say that VBA is more hidden than the old macro language was.
He says people respond "OK, that's cool but what could I use it for?" - and the answer is anything repetitive or mundane that you find yourself doing at a computer. If you find yourself repeatedly going through the same sequence of clicks, a coder thinks "I want to automate this loop". A non-coder just accepts the drudgery.
The Raspberry Pi version of Minecraft can be automated with Python. Anyone who's laboriously built something brick-by-brick, click-by-click in Minecraft out to be impressed by a few lines of Python doing the same job in the blink of an eye. We need more apps that work like that. We need to get to the point where people demand it.
I played Duke Nukem Forever on the OnLive demo, and it was OK. Not to my taste, but responsive enough for me.
Some games rely on millisecond twitching - Quake 3 is one - but lots of games do not. I can't play Quake 3 against online opponents because my brain is too laggy. I'd happily play, say, a recent Prince of Persia on OnLive.
The projected price for the Ouya is US$100 == NZ$120. OK, there's usually more to it than a simple currency conversion, but hey, you don't live in one of the 'big' target geographies; being an early adopter will always have issues.
If the Ouya succeeds in coming out on time, at the expected price point, it will be cheaper than a used Xbox/Wii/PS3. If developers latch onto it, it should quickly gain a large catalogue. But especially, I'd expect a lot of indie games from people who don't want the pain of dealing with MS/Sony/Nintendo - quirkier, edgier games.
I wish them well. The big risk is lack of takeup from developers and customers - which is chicken/egg.
I know too many girls who, when I bring up that I don't mess with girls once they've had more than a minor buzz, proceed to carefully explain to me that what they do when they're drunk as fuck is their business and their responsibility--up to and including fucking the hell out of everyone when they're too far gone to remember their own name (or stay conscious).
People just don't see this as wrong. I don't know why.
Well, (assuming you're male, heterosexual, available, and not opposed to casual sex in general), let's turn it around. If someone tells you, hey, if you're 8-pint drunk, you're not allowed to consent to sex, what would you say? I'd say, to hell with that! Why should it be any different for girls?
If you're not conscious, you can't consent; you can't even imply consent. So that's rape, no question. I doubt the girls you're talking about were defending their right to be shagged while unconscious.
You can be very drunk indeed, still know what you want and what you don't, and still say no.
They do, however, have girls sign consent forms, then genuinely coerce them into doing stuff they didn't want to.
That is, the girl makes it clear when she takes the job that there's no anal, nothing rough, no bondage - then one by one, her agent, the director, the male co-star, etc. - browbeat her (verbally) into submission. It wouldn't surprise me at all if girls were given alcohol to expedite the process.
For example, recently a documentary aired on British TV (sorry, can't remember the name) in which exactly this was happening, until the documentary film crew felt they had to intervene, rather than be accessories to rape.
I have to agree with the other commenters: you've just been silly and short-sighted, and didn't really know what the heck you were doing in the first place. A 5-6 years old PC can perfectly well play games at similar settings as a PS3 or Xbox360, so if you feel their image quality is fine why would you need to chase after newer and newer specs? Or is it just the "since it's POSSIBLE I feel it's my responsibility to continue upgrading!" - mentality?
Which makes me wonder, why make the Steambox upgradeable?
Nail the spec down, factor the design onto a single board with as few chips as possible, and churn them out cheap in their millions. Don't even think of upping the spec for 5 years or so.
You must not have known what you were doing or something.
(I am not the GP)
I used to know what I was doing, with regard to PC building, from around the 486 era until when AGP started replacing PCI. Then I realised that it didn't interest me one jot, and dropped out of the race. From then on I used consoles for gaming, and off-the-shelf PCs for general computing.
If someone offers me a cheap box that behaves like a console, but is more indie-friendly than an Xbox, I'm interested.
Is there a correlation between "casual" and "latency-sensitive"?
I imagine Civ V would work fine. As we learned when all that fuss about OnLive was going on, Xbox GTA4 has more latency than a typical OnLive game running on a server on a WAN.
I was thinking more like a quarter, or less. It's the difference between niche market, limited production runs, versus mass market and huge production runs.
These should be cheaper to churn out that $300 beige boxes.
There's precedent for that. For example there are Raspberry Pi cases which mount on the VESA screw holes. It's a good option, but you do need alternative options, if you want to use the VESA mounting for something else.
There's nothing preventing one from writing free software, if one happens to have an alternate money source so that there is no need to make cash on this one.
Not even that. Lots of people charge money for writing free software. There is nothing about the free software movement that forbids you from selling.
But trying to outlaw such software? That's what I'd call evil!
Fortunately RMS is not trying to outlaw non-free software. He's just trying to teach people that choosing to use it is trapping them.
You can still buy a used SNES, so used Xbox consoles should be available for many years to come.
And although emulators are a hack, they're a successful one. We just have to hope that the emulator community keeps up its DRM-defeating record.
Perhaps the PC systems of my youth have scarred me, but I wouldn't be 100% confident that PC games are futureproof. Will all future Windows releases do XP emulation? Can you run DOS games on Windows 8 (genuinely don't know)?
If he simply tries to convince people that it is best for them to use "free as in RMS" licenses, then I would have no issue with it, but he here is actually advocating changing copyright law to coerce people into using them.
I think this is exactly his position. Feel free to cite me something that says otherwise.
and if you do need to justify your use of it then it is likely these you will need to rely on.
Why would you need to justify your use of it?
Presumably because it causes your colleagues some amount of inconvenience - they've got used to a proprietary system with proprietary file formats and protocols, for example.
Why do you need to explain it? You presumably liked them and derived pleasure from them. That's all that matters. Someone sold a product you saw value in purchasing. It's not Stallman's fucking business.
By that logic, if I buy a product carved from the bones of endangered tigers, by slaves, that's fine -- as long as I like the product and derive pleasure from it. It's not the World Wildlife Fund's business, nor Anti-Slavery International's.
*Of course* non-free software isn't an affront on the scale of slavery or hunting endangered species. But nonetheless, it *is* a social problem if the mainstream computer systems most people use, don't give users the freedom to change them as they see fit.
See, when the TiVo was being developed, hard drives weren't fast enough to reliably read a streaming video while simultaneously writing another; at least not with the available Linux filesystems. So the TiVo guys wrote their own super-duper proprietary filesystem optimised for this use case.
But, normally Linux filesystems are part of the kernel, and so any filesystem you write comes under the same GPL licence as the kernel. TiVo didn't want to share their super-duper proprietary filesystem code. So they wrote a little stub filesystem which communicated with a user program, and implemented their proprietary filesystem as a user program. The stub had to be GPL, but the rest did not.
The GPL deal is "I give you this source code so you can adapt it to your needs; all I ask in return is that you do the same with your modifications". TiVo had found a way to weasel around that deal.
TiVo were taking advantage of the freedom the Linux developers had bestowed upon their code, without bestowing the same freedom on what they added.
RMS doesn't want free software to be an enabler for creating non-free software. Actually that's a little fuzzy - of course you can create non-free software with GCC. I suspect there are pragmatic reasons for that -- maybe he realised that it would never get the uptake it needed otherwise.
I don't *think* RMS advocates making it illegal to create non-free software (because that in itself would be an infringement of personal freedom).
What he wants is to educate people into recognising what they're choosing when they choose non-free software. Most people sleepwalk into using non-free software. They live with the constraints because they're not aware that the constrains can be taken away. They think of software as something you accept as-is, rather than something malleable that can be adapted to your needs.
(Note - you don't need to be a programmer to modify free software -- you could modify it by proxy, simply by chucking some money at a programmer)
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You could learn to do cryptic crosswords. Most clues are modelled around a handful of patterns; general knowledge is a barrier, but you can allow yourself Wikipedia.
Your grandma could learn to program; it might not be worth it, depending on her age and ambitions.
All of these skills are learnt, learning takes time, and it's an opportunity cost. If I'd spent less time learning to code, I might have spent it learning to draw, or practising guitar, and I'd be better at those things. That's not about mental ability; it's about choice of specialisation.
I'm not sure he knows what he's asking for, but I think I know what might address his concerns, and it's basically more embedded languages in apps that people use.
Lots of people learned simple procedural programming with Word/Excel macros. Record a macro, look at the code generated, amend it. Now some people do it with VBA, but I'd say that VBA is more hidden than the old macro language was.
He says people respond "OK, that's cool but what could I use it for?" - and the answer is anything repetitive or mundane that you find yourself doing at a computer. If you find yourself repeatedly going through the same sequence of clicks, a coder thinks "I want to automate this loop". A non-coder just accepts the drudgery.
The Raspberry Pi version of Minecraft can be automated with Python. Anyone who's laboriously built something brick-by-brick, click-by-click in Minecraft out to be impressed by a few lines of Python doing the same job in the blink of an eye. We need more apps that work like that. We need to get to the point where people demand it.
Did you try OnLive?
I played Duke Nukem Forever on the OnLive demo, and it was OK. Not to my taste, but responsive enough for me.
Some games rely on millisecond twitching - Quake 3 is one - but lots of games do not. I can't play Quake 3 against online opponents because my brain is too laggy. I'd happily play, say, a recent Prince of Persia on OnLive.
The projected price for the Ouya is US$100 == NZ$120. OK, there's usually more to it than a simple currency conversion, but hey, you don't live in one of the 'big' target geographies; being an early adopter will always have issues.
If the Ouya succeeds in coming out on time, at the expected price point, it will be cheaper than a used Xbox/Wii/PS3. If developers latch onto it, it should quickly gain a large catalogue. But especially, I'd expect a lot of indie games from people who don't want the pain of dealing with MS/Sony/Nintendo - quirkier, edgier games.
I wish them well. The big risk is lack of takeup from developers and customers - which is chicken/egg.
Sure, fine. But there are many, many more non-Valve games on Steam than there are Valve ones.
I know too many girls who, when I bring up that I don't mess with girls once they've had more than a minor buzz, proceed to carefully explain to me that what they do when they're drunk as fuck is their business and their responsibility--up to and including fucking the hell out of everyone when they're too far gone to remember their own name (or stay conscious).
People just don't see this as wrong. I don't know why.
Well, (assuming you're male, heterosexual, available, and not opposed to casual sex in general), let's turn it around. If someone tells you, hey, if you're 8-pint drunk, you're not allowed to consent to sex, what would you say? I'd say, to hell with that! Why should it be any different for girls?
If you're not conscious, you can't consent; you can't even imply consent. So that's rape, no question. I doubt the girls you're talking about were defending their right to be shagged while unconscious.
You can be very drunk indeed, still know what you want and what you don't, and still say no.
They do, however, have girls sign consent forms, then genuinely coerce them into doing stuff they didn't want to.
That is, the girl makes it clear when she takes the job that there's no anal, nothing rough, no bondage - then one by one, her agent, the director, the male co-star, etc. - browbeat her (verbally) into submission. It wouldn't surprise me at all if girls were given alcohol to expedite the process.
For example, recently a documentary aired on British TV (sorry, can't remember the name) in which exactly this was happening, until the documentary film crew felt they had to intervene, rather than be accessories to rape.
Not sure if you're joking. I don't imagine there will be any games for this system that are not also available on good ol' Steam for Windows.
Or, on Steam for Linux. Looks like it's only supported on Ubuntu for now, but surely that'll change?
I have to agree with the other commenters: you've just been silly and short-sighted, and didn't really know what the heck you were doing in the first place. A 5-6 years old PC can perfectly well play games at similar settings as a PS3 or Xbox360, so if you feel their image quality is fine why would you need to chase after newer and newer specs? Or is it just the "since it's POSSIBLE I feel it's my responsibility to continue upgrading!" - mentality?
Which makes me wonder, why make the Steambox upgradeable?
Nail the spec down, factor the design onto a single board with as few chips as possible, and churn them out cheap in their millions. Don't even think of upping the spec for 5 years or so.
You must not have known what you were doing or something.
(I am not the GP)
I used to know what I was doing, with regard to PC building, from around the 486 era until when AGP started replacing PCI. Then I realised that it didn't interest me one jot, and dropped out of the race. From then on I used consoles for gaming, and off-the-shelf PCs for general computing.
If someone offers me a cheap box that behaves like a console, but is more indie-friendly than an Xbox, I'm interested.
Is there a correlation between "casual" and "latency-sensitive"?
I imagine Civ V would work fine. As we learned when all that fuss about OnLive was going on, Xbox GTA4 has more latency than a typical OnLive game running on a server on a WAN.
I was thinking more like a quarter, or less. It's the difference between niche market, limited production runs, versus mass market and huge production runs.
These should be cheaper to churn out that $300 beige boxes.
Miracast is too laggy for these kinds of video games. No one wants to play an FPS and deal with compression artifacts and latency from miracast.
"These kinds of games"? None of the games I've bought from Steam are FPSs.
There's precedent for that. For example there are Raspberry Pi cases which mount on the VESA screw holes. It's a good option, but you do need alternative options, if you want to use the VESA mounting for something else.
Make enough of them, and that price will come right down.
Because you didn't fix it.
"Free" implies freedom, "Open Source" implies open source. Adding "Libre" to it is redundant.
But there are enough people in this discussion reading "free" as "gratis", to demonstrate that a more precise term is required.
There's nothing preventing one from writing free software, if one happens to have an alternate money source so that there is no need to make cash on this one.
Not even that. Lots of people charge money for writing free software. There is nothing about the free software movement that forbids you from selling.
But trying to outlaw such software? That's what I'd call evil!
Fortunately RMS is not trying to outlaw non-free software. He's just trying to teach people that choosing to use it is trapping them.
You can still buy a used SNES, so used Xbox consoles should be available for many years to come.
And although emulators are a hack, they're a successful one. We just have to hope that the emulator community keeps up its DRM-defeating record.
Perhaps the PC systems of my youth have scarred me, but I wouldn't be 100% confident that PC games are futureproof. Will all future Windows releases do XP emulation? Can you run DOS games on Windows 8 (genuinely don't know)?
Heh, so I've been misusing the term for years :S
Bah.
If he simply tries to convince people that it is best for them to use "free as in RMS" licenses, then I would have no issue with it, but he here is actually advocating changing copyright law to coerce people into using them.
I think this is exactly his position. Feel free to cite me something that says otherwise.
Here are the gnu.org suggestions for government action to promote free software.
and if you do need to justify your use of it then it is likely these you will need to rely on.
Why would you need to justify your use of it?
Presumably because it causes your colleagues some amount of inconvenience - they've got used to a proprietary system with proprietary file formats and protocols, for example.
Why do you need to explain it? You presumably liked them and derived pleasure from them. That's all that matters. Someone sold a product you saw value in purchasing. It's not Stallman's fucking business.
By that logic, if I buy a product carved from the bones of endangered tigers, by slaves, that's fine -- as long as I like the product and derive pleasure from it. It's not the World Wildlife Fund's business, nor Anti-Slavery International's.
*Of course* non-free software isn't an affront on the scale of slavery or hunting endangered species. But nonetheless, it *is* a social problem if the mainstream computer systems most people use, don't give users the freedom to change them as they see fit.
Guessing you don't know what tivoisation is?
See, when the TiVo was being developed, hard drives weren't fast enough to reliably read a streaming video while simultaneously writing another; at least not with the available Linux filesystems. So the TiVo guys wrote their own super-duper proprietary filesystem optimised for this use case.
But, normally Linux filesystems are part of the kernel, and so any filesystem you write comes under the same GPL licence as the kernel. TiVo didn't want to share their super-duper proprietary filesystem code. So they wrote a little stub filesystem which communicated with a user program, and implemented their proprietary filesystem as a user program. The stub had to be GPL, but the rest did not.
The GPL deal is "I give you this source code so you can adapt it to your needs; all I ask in return is that you do the same with your modifications". TiVo had found a way to weasel around that deal.
TiVo were taking advantage of the freedom the Linux developers had bestowed upon their code, without bestowing the same freedom on what they added.
RMS doesn't want free software to be an enabler for creating non-free software. Actually that's a little fuzzy - of course you can create non-free software with GCC. I suspect there are pragmatic reasons for that -- maybe he realised that it would never get the uptake it needed otherwise.
I don't *think* RMS advocates making it illegal to create non-free software (because that in itself would be an infringement of personal freedom).
What he wants is to educate people into recognising what they're choosing when they choose non-free software. Most people sleepwalk into using non-free software. They live with the constraints because they're not aware that the constrains can be taken away. They think of software as something you accept as-is, rather than something malleable that can be adapted to your needs.
(Note - you don't need to be a programmer to modify free software -- you could modify it by proxy, simply by chucking some money at a programmer)