Well just plugging a number of GUI standards to prove your point on linux isn`t really helping the linux case. My point is not that the standards don`t exist, my point is that there are many, and that each application can choose to behave differently (read: unexpectedly). Under windows and especially under Mac, there is much more concensus as to how an application should behave. It`s still possible to fuck it up, but if you keep that up, musually your client the evil home user will turn your office into a helpdesk in minutes. There is a clear vision about what user friendlyness should bring. It plays a key role in designing the OS. With Linux, technical issues play a keyrole. Which is why techies like us all love Linux. But that doesn`t mean that it should be used by everybody, nor that it is suited to handle all the world`s problems.
And yes of course there are exceptions to every rule, and neither MS or Apple are more perfect than the pope. But it`s not so hard to get: Linux was NOT a desktop targetted system. It`s historic command line driven interface somewhat stigmatized it as a 'difficult' system. And this is true. It` may be easy for someone who`s into it, but it`s not for an average user. And that same average user tends to find windows or MacOS easier to start with. And that`s normal because these systems appear - to the home user - as monolithic, very straightforwardly conceived monsters instead of multiple loosely coupled modules. If you don`t know one bit about conmputers, then it`s easier to work with one giant monster instead of with 100 little critters that need to sing in tune to make it work.
Anyway, these are not my observations, you can read them on Joel`s homepage where he actually cites out of a book by R.Stallman. I agree with those observations though.
Q. "So why do you think the ideals of open source... have appealed to so many people?"
A. "Taylor: Well, first you have to define "people"... And what is open source? It is interesting in how you define it..."
How shifty is that?
People: Human beings.
Linux programmers program for linux programmers. The audience is almost primarily a programmers audience. The GUI sucks and no one has a real true standard to enforce anywhere.
Mac & Windows programmers program for a client base of home users. Ease of use for the tech-unsavy is the golden cow everybody bows to. Not surprisingly, screenshots of the GUI are the first thing people want to see when they talk about a new version of the OS. A standard way of doing things are key to appeal to a large audience.
Wo when he mentions people, he`s right. Linux has a different audience than Windows has.
We had the firefox campaign before, which was quite successfull (but not nearly enough) but can the OS movement pull off a marketting campaign by ways of word of mouth, blogging, portal posting, RSS feeds etc, with the sole purpouse of pushing linux ahead as a general solution? I`m thinking in terms of 'all you base..' etc..
A central website with links to all the 'standard' apps that run on linux, mac and windows would be the best way to point people in the 'right' direction. Build a slogan around that, multiply, and profit!
Well I program games, and though books can give you a headstart in doing certain things in a certain way, they never go very far or very deep, and usually are just a colleciton of tricks and tips. They just sit on my desk for the rare occasion that I need to look up the peculiarities of an A* or something or how to build a Q-Hull.
The best way to learn how to make games, is to go out and do it. The best reasons for using this or that language, is the reason YOU have, not the reason someone else has. Each game is different. Each scope is different. The only way to preserve your idea is to work on the transformation yourself without others dictating 'how it should be'.
But what IS always good to read, are the postmortems and articles at Gamasutra.com. They give you an amazing list of resources that are definately worht checking out.
All the best!
Re:I hope GWB is reading Slashdot ...
on
The Evil in E-Mail
·
· Score: 1
Don`t forget. CNN, FOX, MSNBC, BBC.. they are all shaping your opinion. The important part is to judge people on what they DO, much less on how they talk.
The 'War on terrorism' is a fraud to get people`s attention cooperation with rules and regulations that fortify the republican power ever more firmly into the WH, as well as in international organisations like the UN, WTA, G8 and NATO. For the government, the whole terrorism thing has been the best and easiest excuse to follow the course that they are persueing. Uhm.. America, land of the free? No, not really. Land of a television addicted and brainwashed commercially advocated set of ideals chasing mob.
Oh. You call it draconian. *I* am currently waiting for Bush Wacko Junior to first amass and then gass not just the gypsies and the jews, but the entire teenage population of his own country because hell, what can be then leaking the next episode of starwars onto the net early!
Thank you, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, for *truely* caring about the kids of America. Put them in jail for 3 years, yeah, that`s what I would do too..
Publicity is one thing, but polluting air-play with RnB when the whole country is completely not liking that American crap is downright offensive, and imho, one of the reasons why Europeans are thinking Americans are all offensive and aggressive. I`m not kidding. The image of music stars pushing their video`s on all tv channels, pushing their stupid ramblings about 'da getthooo' through our radio`s 24/7.. Europeans simply do not like RnB, yet it is all they get to hear.
It`s not so difficult to see that because of this, Europeans have but 2 other options to get commodotized airplay of their favourite bands and music these days: buy the cd, or download from the internet. And obviously you don`t buy every cd just to have commodotized airplay..
I think that last quality varies company to company. The last game company I worked for most definitely gave me no power to change things. The boss went on and on about how he considered the company a "meritocracy", but it seemed merit was measured solely by duration of chair-warming. I tried to fix conditions around me, starting as basic as I could: source-code comments, design documents, and version-control notifications. As my boss fired me, he told me how the company was never going to do any of those things, that he'd never seen it done that way in the game industry, none of the other programmers wanted to do it that way, and so I was being let go. Although you're probably right in thinking a business-software job would be more regimented.
Sounds like I`d hire you! Your boss is a nitwit. I heard of practices in an E.A. Sports Games division where the source consisted almost entirely of evolutions of evolutions of yet more evolutions of c and assembly code, with some scripting in between, somewhere.. god knows where.. but it works, doesn`t it!? That anekdote constantly reminds me that game code is something that changes so often that designing it is almost a waste of time. Sill. You can only work that way if you have good source control and then either good overall design rules or up-to-date comments. Pesonally I like to write less comments and have more design, but that`s where time becomes a player.
Wait...doing business-software pays 3 times more than game programming? I can be bored for that much money! Sure, I got bored doing tax software, but I was in my mid-20s, and employable, back then..
Well this is the E.C., you see, it`s a cow that needs milking desperately.
Is that the sort of dilemma you're wrestling with?
Yep, that`s it exactly! I have some friends working at the EC (European Commission) doing the software side of things. They work primarily in J2EE on top of Sun`s and HP`s, among other things, but when I discuss with them, I never get the idea that I would actually like that kind of a job. If I don`t have the power there to change things around if I see them go bad, I won`t do it.. On the other hand, 9 to 5, and it earns 3 times more than I have now, and I can have the weekend and evenings to work on my own stuff. I once started a venture with other coleages, and stepped out of it when they were also going into some kind of cahs-register-order-software-in-java direction. That company still exists, but I`m glad I`m in creating games and not in selling furniture.
The daily talks and discussions with artists and other top software people that want to push envelopes, the access to research.. it`s all so much worth it, you know.. and the extra unpaid hours sometimes are also fun.. the only thing to watch out for is to make sure your sociallife is manageable and healthy.. when that is in some way under stress, I won`t have any hesitation to quit anymore. I lost my previous relationship primarily because of a crunch period that started to stretch, and once is more than enough!!
If you want cute games, kids games, fun games.. then undoubtedly the console has taken over. It`s exactly these kind of games that independants could still develop with a low amount of human resources. Best example is that japanese game with the ball that rolls over everything. If you want HL2-level games, you can still push on on the PC platform, in fact, you NEED the PC platform, because it evolves much faster. (That`s where ID made a big mistake with their boring DoomIII and aging engine tech) Right now I know only a few of the games/engines that managed to outclass everything else. HalfLife2, FarCry, Unreal3, with the predecessor Unreal2 having been ported to console and powering things like SplinterCell for example. So while the big engine based games are comlpetely out of the leages of the independents (except if you have an insane kind of money to waste) the console market (where indy`s can make a difference) is powered by kids and their dumb parrents, and the console manufacturers force the 'independents' to obey the rules and see a lot of that revenue reward leak away.
TheSims, World Of WarCrack, HalfLife2.. they all bring amazing things, but not one of them is produced by an indy developper. Signing is so much easier..
Funny that. I have the same idea bout starting anew and on my own. The question is: shall I delve myself into the mess that is J2EE and/or.NET, or shall I do what I love and can do best: create fun games.
Well a lot of time is already wasted because of build times. Then some more time is wasted because devkits have to be shared between developers to test their stuff. A number of hours are spent simply peddling forth and back between debugger and game, reproducing bugs.
I read many comments from people related to an in the game industry, who all say the same thing: management sucks. I can only agree with this, I work in a game dev studio for nearly 3 years. I started as one of the first employees, and since then I have seen a HUGE amount of work being done by a crowd of young and motivated people. From the 25 people or so that started the studio, only a handfull remain, even if we grew up to 50 people at some point. Another studio nearby went bankrupt and the studio was only happy to acquire all those "people with experience". We`re back at 35 people. We have finished 2 games on 2 platforms, which both would make good budget titles. Alas, they have been in our closet for over a year, since no publisher wants to 'co-publish', since we don`t get title-id from mirosoft because our management fucked up some discussions with Infogrames, and because we may have serious copyright troubles with parts of the content (story, names,artwork..) That`s right. 3 years of existance, and not a penny has come in. A lot of good people have moved on to other companies, other jobs, other industries. Management is still fooling itself with good news stories every day, and frustrations sometimes run skyhigh with people exploding because they want to make things better and can`t.
Despite all this, I must say I have enjoyed working in this industry because I learned a whole fucking lot. The knowledge that I have been with every step of the development process makes me more confident. I know what is important in the development of a giant component based puzzle, how to organise it. I can estimate my development time, I`ve researched stuff I otherwise would probably never research. I`ve had a lot of fun seeing unpredicted behavior act out on the screens, and most of all, I finished a game with my name in the creds. Not many people can say this. It was always my dream to do it. When I got the chance, I didn`t say no, and to this day I don`t regret it. The experience *I* have is not all negative. And I would do it again. But I also have the feeling that the game industry is not forever and that I should start thinking about a stable exit route.
I work at an Indy game dev studio and in 2003-2005 I have been in crunch phase for over a year. hours ranged from 55 to 70.. effectively the studio wants crunch phase *all the time*, on every project. Or on any project that rolls, anyway. Other colleages are mostly waiting for cash to drop in and stuff.. Big studios have much shorter crunch periods AND longer content development cycles. The turnover at our company of new people is HIGH, and some people even leave the game because they are fed up with how work is managed, but certainly NOT by the nature of their work.
There is a lot of emphasis on comments here, and while I agree that the commenting style and opportunity seized by a programmer gives away a lot about the insight of programming, I just felt it necessary to add that commenting is not the holy grail either, and certainly not the final and decissive way to judge a programmer. Comments have the annoying property to become outdated. Especially when code ownership is blurry, comments in code tend to become obsolete or unapplicable. Despite all good intentions of the programmer.
It is better to 'read the code' instead. And if you 'can`t read the code', it means that the code sucks! Plain and simple. Then it`s time to refactor, and make sure that you can read the code as if it tells you a story about what happens with data, and why. Real good programmers know how to abstract and describe this process using architectural elements and design patterns, and without the need for a lot of extra commenting.
There is no algorithm that is so complex that it can not be put in a more or less readable form in code. Use abstractions and propper long names for classes, variables and fucntions. Describe with code what you are doing, and use small comments in-between to explain the progression within the algorithm, but refrain from writing large texts and function header comment blocks or whatever. They will become incorrect and misleading, and they are a drag to keep updated.
The only reason where I could think of using extensive comment sections in your code is to feed document system code parsers like Doxygen or Doc++ etc.., but that is only usefull if you`re writing an API, and when you know that 90% of that API is stable and will not change much.
But anyway, I agree with him, although he puts it a little to strong. Besides SUN, there are still IBM, HP, Novell, there is still Adobe, Corel, PowerQuest, Computer Associates, and there is still Apple. Microsoft has a sftware problem called Longhorn, and a hardware problem called Itanium.
I also disagree with the fact that diversity is bad. Quite on the contrary. The various Linux distro`s are a wealth of opportunity for a better solution to emerge. Each distro will try to out-run the competing distro`s on certain points. At some point, the cost to keep up the pace will necessitate the distro`s to merge efforts. Things are not quite as dark as tha author puts it.
Actually no. I meant 'Apple' as in 'an astronauts head', along the lines of the original post.
For illustration, in Antwerp dialect we say 'Pas op of ik verkoop je een peer tegen uwen appel' , translated literally: 'Attention, or I`ll sell you a grenade appel against your appel', and here 'selling' means hitting. Freely translated it simply means: 'I`ll slap you in the face'. Apparently that`s one of those sayings that didn`t carry over between languages.
Sorry, I don`t belong to the silent majority. If this would have been satire or funny, then that's a different story, but it`s not, so I give my opinion on his comments. Naive? Maybe. Conscious-clearing? Sure. Effective? Doubtfull. The right thing to do? Absolutely.
The card would be available to kids aged 12 and up. This is indeed a bit neglective.. kids of age 6 and up can already browse faster than their dog, but it`s not exactly 21 years like you put it..
There`s nothing wrong with being you at heart of course:)
Slashdot Mirror
Well just plugging a number of GUI standards to prove your point on linux isn`t really helping the linux case. My point is not that the standards don`t exist, my point is that there are many, and that each application can choose to behave differently (read: unexpectedly). Under windows and especially under Mac, there is much more concensus as to how an application should behave. It`s still possible to fuck it up, but if you keep that up, musually your client the evil home user will turn your office into a helpdesk in minutes. There is a clear vision about what user friendlyness should bring. It plays a key role in designing the OS. With Linux, technical issues play a keyrole. Which is why techies like us all love Linux. But that doesn`t mean that it should be used by everybody, nor that it is suited to handle all the world`s problems.
And yes of course there are exceptions to every rule, and neither MS or Apple are more perfect than the pope. But it`s not so hard to get: Linux was NOT a desktop targetted system. It`s historic command line driven interface somewhat stigmatized it as a 'difficult' system. And this is true. It` may be easy for someone who`s into it, but it`s not for an average user. And that same average user tends to find windows or MacOS easier to start with. And that`s normal because these systems appear - to the home user - as monolithic, very straightforwardly conceived monsters instead of multiple loosely coupled modules. If you don`t know one bit about conmputers, then it`s easier to work with one giant monster instead of with 100 little critters that need to sing in tune to make it work.
Anyway, these are not my observations, you can read them on Joel`s homepage where he actually cites out of a book by R.Stallman. I agree with those observations though.
Cheers.
Q. "So why do you think the ideals of open source... have appealed to so many people?"
A. "Taylor: Well, first you have to define "people"... And what is open source? It is interesting in how you define it..."
How shifty is that?
People: Human beings.
Linux programmers program for linux programmers. The audience is almost primarily a programmers audience. The GUI sucks and no one has a real true standard to enforce anywhere.
Mac & Windows programmers program for a client base of home users. Ease of use for the tech-unsavy is the golden cow everybody bows to. Not surprisingly, screenshots of the GUI are the first thing people want to see when they talk about a new version of the OS. A standard way of doing things are key to appeal to a large audience.
Wo when he mentions people, he`s right. Linux has a different audience than Windows has.
We had the firefox campaign before, which was quite successfull (but not nearly enough) but can the OS movement pull off a marketting campaign by ways of word of mouth, blogging, portal posting, RSS feeds etc, with the sole purpouse of pushing linux ahead as a general solution? I`m thinking in terms of 'all you base..' etc..
A central website with links to all the 'standard' apps that run on linux, mac and windows would be the best way to point people in the 'right' direction. Build a slogan around that, multiply, and profit!
I know we can do this.
Well I program games, and though books can give you a headstart in doing certain things in a certain way, they never go very far or very deep, and usually are just a colleciton of tricks and tips. They just sit on my desk for the rare occasion that I need to look up the peculiarities of an A* or something or how to build a Q-Hull.
The best way to learn how to make games, is to go out and do it. The best reasons for using this or that language, is the reason YOU have, not the reason someone else has. Each game is different. Each scope is different. The only way to preserve your idea is to work on the transformation yourself without others dictating 'how it should be'.
But what IS always good to read, are the postmortems and articles at Gamasutra.com. They give you an amazing list of resources that are definately worht checking out.
All the best!
Don`t forget. CNN, FOX, MSNBC, BBC.. they are all shaping your opinion. The important part is to judge people on what they DO, much less on how they talk.
The 'War on terrorism' is a fraud to get people`s attention cooperation with rules and regulations that fortify the republican power ever more firmly into the WH, as well as in international organisations like the UN, WTA, G8 and NATO. For the government, the whole terrorism thing has been the best and easiest excuse to follow the course that they are persueing. Uhm.. America, land of the free? No, not really. Land of a television addicted and brainwashed commercially advocated set of ideals chasing mob.
Laugh at it.
Fight it.
Scorn it.
Embrace it.
Kill it.
Oh. You call it draconian. *I* am currently waiting for Bush Wacko Junior to first amass and then gass not just the gypsies and the jews, but the entire teenage population of his own country because hell, what can be then leaking the next episode of starwars onto the net early!
Thank you, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, for *truely* caring about the kids of America. Put them in jail for 3 years, yeah, that`s what I would do too..
Publicity is one thing, but polluting air-play with RnB when the whole country is completely not liking that American crap is downright offensive, and imho, one of the reasons why Europeans are thinking Americans are all offensive and aggressive. I`m not kidding. The image of music stars pushing their video`s on all tv channels, pushing their stupid ramblings about 'da getthooo' through our radio`s 24/7.. Europeans simply do not like RnB, yet it is all they get to hear.
It`s not so difficult to see that because of this, Europeans have but 2 other options to get commodotized airplay of their favourite bands and music these days: buy the cd, or download from the internet. And obviously you don`t buy every cd just to have commodotized airplay..
my cents..
I think that last quality varies company to company. The last game company I worked for most definitely gave me no power to change things. The boss went on and on about how he considered the company a "meritocracy", but it seemed merit was measured solely by duration of chair-warming. I tried to fix conditions around me, starting as basic as I could: source-code comments, design documents, and version-control notifications. As my boss fired me, he told me how the company was never going to do any of those things, that he'd never seen it done that way in the game industry, none of the other programmers wanted to do it that way, and so I was being let go. Although you're probably right in thinking a business-software job would be more regimented.
Sounds like I`d hire you! Your boss is a nitwit. I heard of practices in an E.A. Sports Games division where the source consisted almost entirely of evolutions of evolutions of yet more evolutions of c and assembly code, with some scripting in between, somewhere.. god knows where.. but it works, doesn`t it!? That anekdote constantly reminds me that game code is something that changes so often that designing it is almost a waste of time. Sill. You can only work that way if you have good source control and then either good overall design rules or up-to-date comments. Pesonally I like to write less comments and have more design, but that`s where time becomes a player.
Wait...doing business-software pays 3 times more than game programming? I can be bored for that much money! Sure, I got bored doing tax software, but I was in my mid-20s, and employable, back then..
Well this is the E.C., you see, it`s a cow that needs milking desperately.
Is that the sort of dilemma you're wrestling with?
Yep, that`s it exactly! I have some friends working at the EC (European Commission) doing the software side of things. They work primarily in J2EE on top of Sun`s and HP`s, among other things, but when I discuss with them, I never get the idea that I would actually like that kind of a job. If I don`t have the power there to change things around if I see them go bad, I won`t do it.. On the other hand, 9 to 5, and it earns 3 times more than I have now, and I can have the weekend and evenings to work on my own stuff. I once started a venture with other coleages, and stepped out of it when they were also going into some kind of cahs-register-order-software-in-java direction. That company still exists, but I`m glad I`m in creating games and not in selling furniture.
The daily talks and discussions with artists and other top software people that want to push envelopes, the access to research.. it`s all so much worth it, you know.. and the extra unpaid hours sometimes are also fun.. the only thing to watch out for is to make sure your sociallife is manageable and healthy.. when that is in some way under stress, I won`t have any hesitation to quit anymore. I lost my previous relationship primarily because of a crunch period that started to stretch, and once is more than enough!!
We need more Linux distros. They're rare.
No, they are straaaaaange.
If you want cute games, kids games, fun games.. then undoubtedly the console has taken over. It`s exactly these kind of games that independants could still develop with a low amount of human resources. Best example is that japanese game with the ball that rolls over everything. If you want HL2-level games, you can still push on on the PC platform, in fact, you NEED the PC platform, because it evolves much faster. (That`s where ID made a big mistake with their boring DoomIII and aging engine tech) Right now I know only a few of the games/engines that managed to outclass everything else. HalfLife2, FarCry, Unreal3, with the predecessor Unreal2 having been ported to console and powering things like SplinterCell for example. So while the big engine based games are comlpetely out of the leages of the independents (except if you have an insane kind of money to waste) the console market (where indy`s can make a difference) is powered by kids and their dumb parrents, and the console manufacturers force the 'independents' to obey the rules and see a lot of that revenue reward leak away.
TheSims, World Of WarCrack, HalfLife2.. they all bring amazing things, but not one of them is produced by an indy developper. Signing is so much easier..
Funny that. I have the same idea bout starting anew and on my own. The question is: shall I delve myself into the mess that is J2EE and/or
Well a lot of time is already wasted because of build times. Then some more time is wasted because devkits have to be shared between developers to test their stuff. A number of hours are spent simply peddling forth and back between debugger and game, reproducing bugs.
I read many comments from people related to an in the game industry, who all say the same thing: management sucks. I can only agree with this, I work in a game dev studio for nearly 3 years. I started as one of the first employees, and since then I have seen a HUGE amount of work being done by a crowd of young and motivated people. From the 25 people or so that started the studio, only a handfull remain, even if we grew up to 50 people at some point. Another studio nearby went bankrupt and the studio was only happy to acquire all those "people with experience". We`re back at 35 people. We have finished 2 games on 2 platforms, which both would make good budget titles. Alas, they have been in our closet for over a year, since no publisher wants to 'co-publish', since we don`t get title-id from mirosoft because our management fucked up some discussions with Infogrames, and because we may have serious copyright troubles with parts of the content (story, names,artwork..) That`s right. 3 years of existance, and not a penny has come in. A lot of good people have moved on to other companies, other jobs, other industries. Management is still fooling itself with good news stories every day, and frustrations sometimes run skyhigh with people exploding because they want to make things better and can`t.
Despite all this, I must say I have enjoyed working in this industry because I learned a whole fucking lot. The knowledge that I have been with every step of the development process makes me more confident. I know what is important in the development of a giant component based puzzle, how to organise it. I can estimate my development time, I`ve researched stuff I otherwise would probably never research. I`ve had a lot of fun seeing unpredicted behavior act out on the screens, and most of all, I finished a game with my name in the creds. Not many people can say this. It was always my dream to do it. When I got the chance, I didn`t say no, and to this day I don`t regret it. The experience *I* have is not all negative. And I would do it again. But I also have the feeling that the game industry is not forever and that I should start thinking about a stable exit route.
Then stop cracking and start buying.
I work at an Indy game dev studio and in 2003-2005 I have been in crunch phase for over a year. hours ranged from 55 to 70.. effectively the studio wants crunch phase *all the time*, on every project. Or on any project that rolls, anyway. Other colleages are mostly waiting for cash to drop in and stuff.. Big studios have much shorter crunch periods AND longer content development cycles. The turnover at our company of new people is HIGH, and some people even leave the game because they are fed up with how work is managed, but certainly NOT by the nature of their work.
There is a lot of emphasis on comments here, and while I agree that the commenting style and opportunity seized by a programmer gives away a lot about the insight of programming, I just felt it necessary to add that commenting is not the holy grail either, and certainly not the final and decissive way to judge a programmer. Comments have the annoying property to become outdated. Especially when code ownership is blurry, comments in code tend to become obsolete or unapplicable. Despite all good intentions of the programmer.
It is better to 'read the code' instead. And if you 'can`t read the code', it means that the code sucks! Plain and simple. Then it`s time to refactor, and make sure that you can read the code as if it tells you a story about what happens with data, and why. Real good programmers know how to abstract and describe this process using architectural elements and design patterns, and without the need for a lot of extra commenting.
There is no algorithm that is so complex that it can not be put in a more or less readable form in code. Use abstractions and propper long names for classes, variables and fucntions. Describe with code what you are doing, and use small comments in-between to explain the progression within the algorithm, but refrain from writing large texts and function header comment blocks or whatever. They will become incorrect and misleading, and they are a drag to keep updated.
The only reason where I could think of using extensive comment sections in your code is to feed document system code parsers like Doxygen or Doc++ etc.., but that is only usefull if you`re writing an API, and when you know that 90% of that API is stable and will not change much.
The date on the article says:
"Salt Lake City Airport, Dec 4, 2005"
But anyway, I agree with him, although he puts it a little to strong. Besides SUN, there are still IBM, HP, Novell, there is still Adobe, Corel, PowerQuest, Computer Associates, and there is still Apple. Microsoft has a sftware problem called Longhorn, and a hardware problem called Itanium.
I also disagree with the fact that diversity is bad. Quite on the contrary. The various Linux distro`s are a wealth of opportunity for a better solution to emerge. Each distro will try to out-run the competing distro`s on certain points. At some point, the cost to keep up the pace will necessitate the distro`s to merge efforts. Things are not quite as dark as tha author puts it.
Cheers.
Actually no. I meant 'Apple' as in 'an astronauts head', along the lines of the original post.
For illustration, in Antwerp dialect we say 'Pas op of ik verkoop je een peer tegen uwen appel' , translated literally: 'Attention, or I`ll sell you a grenade appel against your appel', and here 'selling' means hitting. Freely translated it simply means: 'I`ll slap you in the face'. Apparently that`s one of those sayings that didn`t carry over between languages.
Well, *somebody* had to do it, right?
you know.. just like in 'THE daily mirror' and 'THE sun'.
Sorry, I don`t belong to the silent majority. If this would have been satire or funny, then that's a different story, but it`s not, so I give my opinion on his comments. Naive? Maybe. Conscious-clearing? Sure. Effective? Doubtfull. The right thing to do? Absolutely.
The card would be available to kids aged 12 and up. This is indeed a bit neglective.. kids of age 6 and up can already browse faster than their dog, but it`s not exactly 21 years like you put it..
There`s nothing wrong with being you at heart of course