Agreed. There is a very serious image problem in the open source community - the hardon for bashing Microsoft is basically a reflex now, without any reflection as to how things actually are these days with the quality of their software.
An excellent point of course. I didn't mention OS X because the blog seemed more focused on open source and the ideology of openness, which is traditionally more of a Linux focus than OS X, but you're still right.
In a competitive environment, it would be. In a monopoly position, it simply is anti-competitive in an area where you'd like some competition. I agree it is not "bribery", though.
Oh please. The monopoly position doesn't hold much water these days. We're got alternatives - Linux and LibreOffice. They're freely available with no restrictions. Microsoft can offer Windows and MS Office as cheaply as they want, but they won't offer it for free because that doesn't exactly net them any money, so no matter what, they will always be offering the more expensive option compared to what I suggested. It's not like they're undercutting the opposition when the opposition is free.
No, there's more to it than that. People prefer to spend the money to keep the status quo and not have to learn anything new than try something that MIGHT work well enough for them, but would be different to what everyone else around them is using. We HAVE enough options now to keep everyone happy, so I don't see Microsoft as much of a monopoly now. They do have a huge market share though, but they can't remove the free option.
This is the problem. People like you do not see anything but black and white. There is no grey apparently. You talk as if someone might actually find Windows more suitable for what they use a computer for than what Linux provides (e.g. me).
You seem to think I'm an idiot for having made a conscious choice to stick with Windows for logical and practical reasons, and since this does not click with your thought processes, you twitch, and post as you did.
It is hence you who is the mindless twit. For you do not accept a contradicting opinion.
Slashdot is fun. It reports news which basically doesn't exist. This is just some guy who is on an anti-Microsoft bender and wants to somehow make his ideology meaningful in a world which doesn't really give a shit (if the low Linux uptake has anything to go by).
His rant is way too emotional for something that the politicians and most parents won't even understand. I mean, everyone uses Windows right? It's installed on all computers, and if you point at a random computer user, it's probably 99% likely they use Windows or have at least one Windows machine in the house. This is slight hyperbole of course, but it's enough to bet money on most of the time.
Now I'm not saying there isn't value in a open and multi-platform way to distribute information. It's just that this guy overblows the matter. The number of people who would be affected by the requirement for Silverlight is probably going to be EXTREMELY minor. Should those people be penalized? Of course not. But they also made the decision to make life more difficult for themselves by going against the grain and choosing to use something other than Windows (an OS pre-installed on virtually all computers you can buy, so having to buy it yourself is unnecessary).
In other words, if you don't want to use Windows, be aware that you'll be treated like a second-class citizen and it's extremely hard to convince non-geeks (general public as well as politicians) that there's any issue at stake here. Heck, maybe this is part of the reason why people are scared off from using Linux - they see all these posts about "battles" and "fights" that just aren't faced if you use something more mainstream. One could argue that some fights are worth fighting for, but if so... a small petition from a bunch of geeks with too much emotion and too little tact is likely to not do a damn thing.
Agreed. I've decided to get back into some older games such as Neverwinter Nights 1 and Unreal Tournament 2004 and have been surprised at just how much gaming value these two games have with regards to free, user-made content. NWN in particular has so many damn modules it's amazing how much gameplay you can get from a single game (yes there's obviously going to be crap in that list, but all you do is go to the NWVault, sort by popularity/top lists and the number of available modules ends up in your favour, since this also means there's so much good stuff too).
As for UT2004, the user-made mods and even the bonus packs from Epic, back when they didn't do the paid-DLC thin, is also a great example of what gaming life was like before paid-DLC was commonplace.
Not all mods are created equal. I've noticed that the majority of moderators on the Steam forums (at least the most active ones anyway) are total Valve fanboys who don't see anything Valve does as wrong, and some of them are also quite paranoid at leaving anything controversial open for discussion. Bans are not uncommon if you try to open discussion regarding taboo subjects such as piracy - they won't even bother reading the comment, they'll just ban first and not ask questions later.
Yup. I think the Windows 7 one is superior to Vista in terms of recall speed as well, though I've never compared it to third-party desktop indexing software.
I should have clarified - I don't like how the iTunes store only sells AAC files. I know I can play them in other players (player of choice is Winamp), I just prefer having to deal with MP3, FLAC or in rare cases, OGG. I don't currently have any AAC files, and in keeping a known set of popular and open-source codecs I reduce the likelyhood of dealing with any issues down the track.
As for a portable media player, don't really use them anymore. I either listen to music on my media centre/main computer or burn then to a CD and play in my car, which lacks a USB port. For these reasons the space gained by other formats is not important.
I didn't even notice those dimples on the F/J keys until reading the summary. I've gone through life without noticing them on keyboards for some reason (or I either noticed them once but forgot about them). I'd still argue I'm a pretty good typing though. Shows how useless they are I guess.
I should have clarified - I don't like how the iTunes store only sells AAC files. I know I can play them in other players (player of choice in Winamp), I just prefer having to deal with MP3, FLAC or in rare cases, OGG. I don't currently have any AAC files, and in keeping a known set of popular and open-source codecs I reduce the likelyhood of dealing with any issues down the track
As for a portal media player, don't really use them anymore. I either listen to music on my media center/main computer or burn then to a CD and play in my car, which lacks a USB port. For these reasons the space gained by other formats is not important.
Well it was mainly a joke about the "big brother" bit. I do not wish to denigrate anyone - my mother is from New Zealand. We Aussies just like making fun of the NZ-ers every now and then (hence the famous "sheep" jokes with regards to the New Zealanders).
I'm currently on a bit of a "get legit" roll when it comes to my media. All my software is acquired legally via the net so that's OK, it's just stuff like movies and music that I still require an optical drive for. Why?
1. I like my music in FLAC format. There are very few digital music stores which sell in this format. My favourite by far is http://bandcamp.com/ but they don't have much mainstream/big-artist stuff.
2. Even if I didn't have a preference for FLAC, there aren't any legal digital music stores around which service my needs with at least a high-bitrate MP3. I don't want to use iTunes because I don't want to deal with AAC (I can convert them but I don't want a dependency on iTunes anyway). Amazon still hasn't, for whatever reason, opened an MP3 store here in Australia yet despite promising to open up to the world many years ago.
3. You can forget about any legit digital movie stores selling non-DRMed stuff either.
So what do I do? I buy music CDs and rip them to FLAC. I buy DVDs and use HandBrake to convert them, or just play them directly with VLC. Both of these cases require an optical drive, and until such a time occurs that physical sales of media are completely abolished, I will continue to do this. UNLESS... a suitable online store apears in my area which sells non-DRMed music AND video of what I want, in my preferred format. At this rate that's going to take a very long time (if ever), so I do what I can to stave off piracy.
If I were a Kiwi (slang for New Zealander in case you didn't know), this law would give me an additional impetus to begin searching for free/open-source/creative commons software and media for all my computing and entertainment needs. Sure, I'd buy stuff occasionally as well, but if I had to buy every single thing I was using which was pirated I'd be broke and seriously in debt. Much better to hunt out legally free software and media.
Having said that, I'm an Aussie (the bigger brother of the Kiwis) and it's a hobby for me to do this anyway even though we don't have such a draconian law. I suppose some others in NZ might find ways to get around it, but I don't see the point of risking it myself.
and will be released for free (so we don't get stabbed by lawyers)
Being released for free doesn't mean much. Even completely free mods for other games, if they impinged on the intellectual property of another company have been taken down through the typical use of cease and desist letters.
Which means that
Original SMB levels and Lost levels will be included
is likely going to bite this guy in the ass, assuming he didn't get permission from Nintendo (which from a lack of mention on the site I doubt he has).
The reason this is news, at least for Slashdot, is that so many people here have spent years building Google up as a benevolent engineering company trying to make the world a better place
In other words, Slashdotters are no more wise than anyone else and just as gullible. The only organizations out there who have it in their charter to make the world a better place would be non-profits. Google are good at marketing that's for sure.
Let's say, for example, that GIMP has an extra awesome macro-recording/playback capability that makes Photoshop look like a toy in comparison. (I don't know if this is the case or not so please forgive my ignorance.)
I forgive your ignorance, but I feel compelled to respond here by saying that it's actually the other way around. Photoshop has an awesome recording/playback capability (called Actions). You just hit record, perform the steps you desire, hit stop and there you go.
With the GIMP the nearest equivalent are scripts, but you have to write them yourself using a pseudo-scripting language. There's no simple recording feature, and I wasn't going to sit and waste time learn how to code up a script for an equivalent workflow of what I was used to doing in Photoshop, because the scripting is actually very complicated, particularly if you can't find the commands to do what you want.
People have complained about this (from 2001! - https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51937), but nothing has happened because as the last post in said thread says, "we simply don't have enough developers."
I won't bug them about it, but I won't bother with GIMP anymore because it simply lacks easy of use and important functionality. Open source doesn't always work in practice.
For anyone concerned about tech support situations, the troubleshooting URL about:support will stay. Initially I was concerned about this as well, but it's not THAT serious.
I'll just end this rant by asking: 'How many of you have been bit by one of the aforementioned issues, and what is your take on the modern 'MBA' mentality that seems to be creeping it's way into the open source ecosystem?'
My take? It's been enough for me to completely abandon any further attempts to convert to Linux until they stop fucking with things. I'm sticking with Windows 7 for now because it's proven to me to me a mature, very solid and surprisingly stable platform to run all of my software (both proprietary and open-source, so I get the best of both worlds). I can also count on plenty of older software still working in Windows 7, as well as much of my ingrained habits still working in the new Windows alongside all the new functionality, as opposed to GNOME 3's method of forcing the user to relearn nearly everything about how to use an interface.
Funny you mentioned the Loki installers. They are definitely broken, and I'm not the only one who's had issues with this. Not to mention more modern games like Doom 3 and Quake 4 have issues with Pulseaudio, which results in a noticeable sound lag unless you find out (via Googling) how to use the pasuspender command. Or still popular games like Wolf:ET in which you'll have absolutely NO audio in modern versions of Ubuntu which have removed OSS entierly from their versions of the kernel, unless you either recompile the kernel or find an ALSA wrapper a kind Ubuntu forum member was able to write.
And yet... you don't get these problems with Windows 7. I know I don't enjoy the unnecessary stress/effort of getting things to work the way they should, so that's why I don't bother with Linux anymore. Believe me, I feel happier now too.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. There is a very serious image problem in the open source community - the hardon for bashing Microsoft is basically a reflex now, without any reflection as to how things actually are these days with the quality of their software.
An excellent point of course. I didn't mention OS X because the blog seemed more focused on open source and the ideology of openness, which is traditionally more of a Linux focus than OS X, but you're still right.
Oh please. The monopoly position doesn't hold much water these days. We're got alternatives - Linux and LibreOffice. They're freely available with no restrictions. Microsoft can offer Windows and MS Office as cheaply as they want, but they won't offer it for free because that doesn't exactly net them any money, so no matter what, they will always be offering the more expensive option compared to what I suggested. It's not like they're undercutting the opposition when the opposition is free.
No, there's more to it than that. People prefer to spend the money to keep the status quo and not have to learn anything new than try something that MIGHT work well enough for them, but would be different to what everyone else around them is using. We HAVE enough options now to keep everyone happy, so I don't see Microsoft as much of a monopoly now. They do have a huge market share though, but they can't remove the free option.
This is the problem. People like you do not see anything but black and white. There is no grey apparently. You talk as if someone might actually find Windows more suitable for what they use a computer for than what Linux provides (e.g. me).
You seem to think I'm an idiot for having made a conscious choice to stick with Windows for logical and practical reasons, and since this does not click with your thought processes, you twitch, and post as you did.
It is hence you who is the mindless twit. For you do not accept a contradicting opinion.
So cheap copies of Windows and Office = bribibing? Sounds more like clever business to me.
OH! But it's Microsoft, how could I forget this little fact that completely ruins a person's objectivity...
Slashdot is fun. It reports news which basically doesn't exist. This is just some guy who is on an anti-Microsoft bender and wants to somehow make his ideology meaningful in a world which doesn't really give a shit (if the low Linux uptake has anything to go by).
His rant is way too emotional for something that the politicians and most parents won't even understand. I mean, everyone uses Windows right? It's installed on all computers, and if you point at a random computer user, it's probably 99% likely they use Windows or have at least one Windows machine in the house. This is slight hyperbole of course, but it's enough to bet money on most of the time.
Now I'm not saying there isn't value in a open and multi-platform way to distribute information. It's just that this guy overblows the matter. The number of people who would be affected by the requirement for Silverlight is probably going to be EXTREMELY minor. Should those people be penalized? Of course not. But they also made the decision to make life more difficult for themselves by going against the grain and choosing to use something other than Windows (an OS pre-installed on virtually all computers you can buy, so having to buy it yourself is unnecessary).
In other words, if you don't want to use Windows, be aware that you'll be treated like a second-class citizen and it's extremely hard to convince non-geeks (general public as well as politicians) that there's any issue at stake here. Heck, maybe this is part of the reason why people are scared off from using Linux - they see all these posts about "battles" and "fights" that just aren't faced if you use something more mainstream. One could argue that some fights are worth fighting for, but if so... a small petition from a bunch of geeks with too much emotion and too little tact is likely to not do a damn thing.
Agreed. I've decided to get back into some older games such as Neverwinter Nights 1 and Unreal Tournament 2004 and have been surprised at just how much gaming value these two games have with regards to free, user-made content. NWN in particular has so many damn modules it's amazing how much gameplay you can get from a single game (yes there's obviously going to be crap in that list, but all you do is go to the NWVault, sort by popularity/top lists and the number of available modules ends up in your favour, since this also means there's so much good stuff too).
As for UT2004, the user-made mods and even the bonus packs from Epic, back when they didn't do the paid-DLC thin, is also a great example of what gaming life was like before paid-DLC was commonplace.
Not all mods are created equal. I've noticed that the majority of moderators on the Steam forums (at least the most active ones anyway) are total Valve fanboys who don't see anything Valve does as wrong, and some of them are also quite paranoid at leaving anything controversial open for discussion. Bans are not uncommon if you try to open discussion regarding taboo subjects such as piracy - they won't even bother reading the comment, they'll just ban first and not ask questions later.
We've got some real morons working in the security area of the gaming industry.
Maybe they can hire Steve Jobs. I hear he was the CEO of a pretty large company who left recently.
Oh damnit now I can't remember the name of that company! If only they were in the news more I'd remember them.
Yup. I think the Windows 7 one is superior to Vista in terms of recall speed as well, though I've never compared it to third-party desktop indexing software.
You have a 12TB file server? WTF are you putting on that thing, pirated content you'll never have enough time in your life to watch?
I should have clarified - I don't like how the iTunes store only sells AAC files. I know I can play them in other players (player of choice is Winamp), I just prefer having to deal with MP3, FLAC or in rare cases, OGG. I don't currently have any AAC files, and in keeping a known set of popular and open-source codecs I reduce the likelyhood of dealing with any issues down the track.
As for a portable media player, don't really use them anymore. I either listen to music on my media centre/main computer or burn then to a CD and play in my car, which lacks a USB port. For these reasons the space gained by other formats is not important.
Oh, and before anyone points out the obvious, the missing "at" between good and typing is more about a lack of proof-reading than typing skill. :)
I didn't even notice those dimples on the F/J keys until reading the summary. I've gone through life without noticing them on keyboards for some reason (or I either noticed them once but forgot about them). I'd still argue I'm a pretty good typing though. Shows how useless they are I guess.
I should have clarified - I don't like how the iTunes store only sells AAC files. I know I can play them in other players (player of choice in Winamp), I just prefer having to deal with MP3, FLAC or in rare cases, OGG. I don't currently have any AAC files, and in keeping a known set of popular and open-source codecs I reduce the likelyhood of dealing with any issues down the track
As for a portal media player, don't really use them anymore. I either listen to music on my media center/main computer or burn then to a CD and play in my car, which lacks a USB port. For these reasons the space gained by other formats is not important.
Well it was mainly a joke about the "big brother" bit. I do not wish to denigrate anyone - my mother is from New Zealand. We Aussies just like making fun of the NZ-ers every now and then (hence the famous "sheep" jokes with regards to the New Zealanders).
I'm currently on a bit of a "get legit" roll when it comes to my media. All my software is acquired legally via the net so that's OK, it's just stuff like movies and music that I still require an optical drive for. Why?
1. I like my music in FLAC format. There are very few digital music stores which sell in this format. My favourite by far is http://bandcamp.com/ but they don't have much mainstream/big-artist stuff.
2. Even if I didn't have a preference for FLAC, there aren't any legal digital music stores around which service my needs with at least a high-bitrate MP3. I don't want to use iTunes because I don't want to deal with AAC (I can convert them but I don't want a dependency on iTunes anyway). Amazon still hasn't, for whatever reason, opened an MP3 store here in Australia yet despite promising to open up to the world many years ago.
3. You can forget about any legit digital movie stores selling non-DRMed stuff either.
So what do I do? I buy music CDs and rip them to FLAC. I buy DVDs and use HandBrake to convert them, or just play them directly with VLC. Both of these cases require an optical drive, and until such a time occurs that physical sales of media are completely abolished, I will continue to do this. UNLESS... a suitable online store apears in my area which sells non-DRMed music AND video of what I want, in my preferred format. At this rate that's going to take a very long time (if ever), so I do what I can to stave off piracy.
If I were a Kiwi (slang for New Zealander in case you didn't know), this law would give me an additional impetus to begin searching for free/open-source/creative commons software and media for all my computing and entertainment needs. Sure, I'd buy stuff occasionally as well, but if I had to buy every single thing I was using which was pirated I'd be broke and seriously in debt. Much better to hunt out legally free software and media.
Having said that, I'm an Aussie (the bigger brother of the Kiwis) and it's a hobby for me to do this anyway even though we don't have such a draconian law. I suppose some others in NZ might find ways to get around it, but I don't see the point of risking it myself.
But I've always been told by the fanboys that Linux is inherently secure, right? So that's not possible.
But Linux has no viruses/trojans/malware, right?
BTW - if you can't take this as the light jabbing it's supposed to be without wanting to rip my spine out, turn the computer off and take a break. :)
From developer's link:
Being released for free doesn't mean much. Even completely free mods for other games, if they impinged on the intellectual property of another company have been taken down through the typical use of cease and desist letters.
Which means that
is likely going to bite this guy in the ass, assuming he didn't get permission from Nintendo (which from a lack of mention on the site I doubt he has).
In other words, Slashdotters are no more wise than anyone else and just as gullible. The only organizations out there who have it in their charter to make the world a better place would be non-profits. Google are good at marketing that's for sure.
I forgive your ignorance, but I feel compelled to respond here by saying that it's actually the other way around. Photoshop has an awesome recording/playback capability (called Actions). You just hit record, perform the steps you desire, hit stop and there you go.
With the GIMP the nearest equivalent are scripts, but you have to write them yourself using a pseudo-scripting language. There's no simple recording feature, and I wasn't going to sit and waste time learn how to code up a script for an equivalent workflow of what I was used to doing in Photoshop, because the scripting is actually very complicated, particularly if you can't find the commands to do what you want.
People have complained about this (from 2001! - https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51937), but nothing has happened because as the last post in said thread says, "we simply don't have
enough developers."
I won't bug them about it, but I won't bother with GIMP anymore because it simply lacks easy of use and important functionality. Open source doesn't always work in practice.
For anyone concerned about tech support situations, the troubleshooting URL about:support will stay. Initially I was concerned about this as well, but it's not THAT serious.
My take? It's been enough for me to completely abandon any further attempts to convert to Linux until they stop fucking with things. I'm sticking with Windows 7 for now because it's proven to me to me a mature, very solid and surprisingly stable platform to run all of my software (both proprietary and open-source, so I get the best of both worlds). I can also count on plenty of older software still working in Windows 7, as well as much of my ingrained habits still working in the new Windows alongside all the new functionality, as opposed to GNOME 3's method of forcing the user to relearn nearly everything about how to use an interface.
Funny you mentioned the Loki installers. They are definitely broken, and I'm not the only one who's had issues with this. Not to mention more modern games like Doom 3 and Quake 4 have issues with Pulseaudio, which results in a noticeable sound lag unless you find out (via Googling) how to use the pasuspender command. Or still popular games like Wolf:ET in which you'll have absolutely NO audio in modern versions of Ubuntu which have removed OSS entierly from their versions of the kernel, unless you either recompile the kernel or find an ALSA wrapper a kind Ubuntu forum member was able to write.
And yet... you don't get these problems with Windows 7. I know I don't enjoy the unnecessary stress/effort of getting things to work the way they should, so that's why I don't bother with Linux anymore. Believe me, I feel happier now too.