What is it about the interface that bothers you? I'm sure the people that write the game would love your constructive feedback.
You can reach them at freeciv-dev at freeciv dot org, or check out their website at http://www.freeciv.org for archives.
This "common open source software problem" is more likely that there's not enough feedback regarding what would improve the UI, and/or not enough people or time to do it. It's really difficult for most people to provide a nice UI to software they spend a lot of time working on. FreeCiv has 4 clients in the code base now, and different people work on different parts. There are several nice pending patches that we'll probably see in later days as the source base was being stabilized for the 1.12.0 release. FreeCiv dev people are constantly trying to improve the user's experience, just look at the changelog, almost everything there is for usability or a gameplay enhancement. Many users also contribute new parts for the GUI when they have an approach they like better, like the new city dialog patch for the gtk client(don't know what the current status is, but it doesn't look like it got in 1.12.0). The feelings you have shared would be the most productive if you used them to motivate yourself to do something similar.
Users are the most important part of usability and when you don't know what they want or how they think it should work then it's pretty difficult to give them what they want.
The command line interface on the server makes perfect sense. Are you always going to be wanting to run the server on a machine you have a GUI on? I sure don't. It's better than requiring a GUI to run the server... I'd rather there was more focus on improving the clients than the server UI, but perhaps you could write a little shell script or some server gui add-on that would simplify or render transparent setting up the game environment for single and possibly multiplayer games. That would likely be quite well received.
You can complain, you can contribute. You can even complain while you contribute, but contribution is the only way to get it done the way you want it to be done.
SDL supports full screen X, GGI, framebuffer consoles, and SVGALib for display, among all of its other cross-platform support. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
anyone beloved by lawyers is automatically suspect in my book
It's a good thing you have that book to tell you what to think; you would otherwise not suspect someone that has gained the affection of more than one lawyer.
Do some research. Almost any US citizen can become financially secure enough to pay for their children's education, live comfortably, and buy some of the toys they've always wanted.
You can do this with an IRA, many/.ers can do this through their employer's 401K programs. The amount you contribute is practically unnoticeable, but the returns of a tax-deferred compound interest plan are staggering! Do the math, you'll probably be surprised. Who wants to be a millionaire? You can, without spending more than a few hours of time arranging it.
I was a complete financial idiot until I read The Wealthy Barber. Everything I've mentioned is discussed there.
I've been using PySDL since version 0.0.2 and it's great! It may be what you're looking for in order to give your child(and yourself) some visual feedback. The SDL homepage is http://www.libsdl.org and PySDL is at http://pysdl.sourceforge.net. With a couple of facility functions you should be able to easily create game-type graphics, PySDL allows you to work at the pixel level and/or using SDL's rectangle type functions. Also, the windows port is coming along nicely so you can run it on either platform without a recompile. I hope mac gets there soon;-).
Remember, advertising is a way to make money, by posting(or following a link to) an msnbc URL, you are making Microsoft some money. Maybe you don't care, I just wanted to point it out.
Hemos - First of all congratulations, a good relationship is a hard thing to find. Are you registered anywhere? You could probably get some good net-booty if you do, I hear thousands of geeks read this 'site;-) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Sure, I agree that etoys is in the wrong for the way they handled things. However, if we are talking about good netizenship here, wouldn't it also be good netizenship if etoy.com used some sort of rating system to deter audiences the material is deemed inappropriate for? I think this would remove yet another etoys leg to stand on, and the whole thing is pretty easy to implement on the etoy end. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The fact of the matter is that no companies are going to support linux unless they stand to profit from it in some way. If they don't profit, they're not going to do it. I'm willing to bet that if linux becomes the OS on the majority of computers in the world, even Microsoft will port to it. It just makes sense in the business world.
But, due to the nature of open source software, linux can also profit from the deal regardless of what companies do. Commercial interest will not harm linux, it will only make it better. If you don't like what a company is doing, don't support them!
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What is it about the interface that bothers you? I'm sure the people that write the game would love your constructive feedback.
You can reach them at freeciv-dev at freeciv dot org, or check out their website at http://www.freeciv.org
for archives.
This "common open source software problem" is more likely that there's not enough feedback regarding what would improve the UI, and/or not enough people or time to do it. It's really difficult for most people to provide a nice UI to software they spend a lot of time working on. FreeCiv has 4 clients in the code base now, and different people work on different parts. There are several nice pending patches that we'll probably see in later days as the source base was being stabilized for the 1.12.0 release. FreeCiv dev people are constantly trying to improve the user's experience, just look at the changelog, almost everything there is for usability or a gameplay enhancement. Many users also contribute new parts for the GUI when they have an approach they like better, like the new city dialog patch for the gtk client(don't know what the current status is, but it doesn't look like it got in 1.12.0). The feelings you have shared would be the most productive if you used them to motivate yourself to do something similar.
Users are the most important part of usability and when you don't know what they want or how they think it should work then it's pretty difficult to give them what they want.
The command line interface on the server makes perfect sense. Are you always going to be wanting to run the server on a machine you have a GUI on? I sure don't. It's better than requiring a GUI to run the server... I'd rather there was more focus on improving the clients than the server UI, but perhaps you could write a little shell script or some server gui add-on that would simplify or render transparent setting up the game environment for single and possibly multiplayer games. That would likely be quite well received.
You can complain, you can contribute. You can even complain while you contribute, but contribution is the only way to get it done the way you want it to be done.
Thanks for such an informative post!
SDL supports full screen X, GGI, framebuffer consoles, and SVGALib for display, among all of its other cross-platform support.
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anyone beloved by lawyers is automatically suspect in my book
It's a good thing you have that book to tell you what to think; you would otherwise not suspect someone that has gained the affection of more than one lawyer.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Do some research. Almost any US citizen can become financially secure enough to pay for their children's education, live comfortably, and buy some of the toys they've always wanted.
/.ers can do this through their employer's 401K programs. The amount you contribute is practically unnoticeable, but the returns of a tax-deferred compound interest plan are staggering! Do the math, you'll probably be surprised. Who wants to be a millionaire? You can, without spending more than a few hours of time arranging it.
You can do this with an IRA, many
I was a complete financial idiot until I read The Wealthy Barber. Everything I've mentioned is discussed there.
It's not hard.
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I've been using PySDL since version 0.0.2 and it's great! It may be what you're looking for in order to give your child(and yourself) some visual feedback. The SDL homepage is http://www.libsdl.org and PySDL is at http://pysdl.sourceforge.net. With a couple of facility functions you should be able to easily create game-type graphics, PySDL allows you to work at the pixel level and/or using SDL's rectangle type functions. Also, the windows port is coming along nicely so you can run it on either platform without a recompile. I hope mac gets there soon ;-).
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I would really like to see what Mr. Adams' response is to this question.= -=-=
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Remember, advertising is a way to make money, by posting(or following a link to) an msnbc URL, you are making Microsoft some money. Maybe you don't care, I just wanted to point it out.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Hemos - First of all congratulations, a good relationship is a hard thing to find. Are you registered anywhere? You could probably get some good net-booty if you do, I hear thousands of geeks read this 'site ;-)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Sure, I agree that etoys is in the wrong for the way they handled things. However, if we are talking about good netizenship here, wouldn't it also be good netizenship if etoy.com used some sort of rating system to deter audiences the material is deemed inappropriate for? I think this would remove yet another etoys leg to stand on, and the whole thing is pretty easy to implement on the etoy end.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
The fact of the matter is that no companies are going to support linux unless they stand to profit from it in some way. If they don't profit, they're not going to do it. I'm willing to bet that if linux becomes the OS on the majority of computers in the world, even Microsoft will port to it. It just makes sense in the business world.
But, due to the nature of open source software, linux can also profit from the deal regardless of what companies do. Commercial interest will not harm linux, it will only make it better. If you don't like what a company is doing, don't support them!