Basically Gentoo can be great if it fits your needs, but pretending that Gentoo is perfect and problem free isn't going to change the reality that it isn't.
This is true; however whereas binary package distributions tend to work-or-not-work, Gentoo provides you with pretty much everything you need to fix something when it doesn't. It's less a matter of "perfect" and more a matter of "perfectly transparent".
Landor polled 2,000 consumers. Knowing what you know about consumers and their knowledge of tech, how many of them do you think were even aware of rootkit issues and bad batteries (unless they were personally affected)?
The article is right, the Playstation cures much bad press.
Yeah, but people need to get real. All of these things are simply excuses. The rootkit? Contractor for Sony/BMG... not high-level insidious conspiracy, and nothing to do with SCE. Bad batteries? Warned, recalled, and hardly something intentional.
Look at Microsoft. They have a long-term history of abuse, of which most slashdotters should be aware. This is stuff from the highest levels from the earliest days, designed to slit the throats of competitors and overwhelm the market. IBM? DR? Stac? Lotus? Netscape? The list goes on, both big names and small. Hell, SCO is still going on. We're talking about a company whose only real competition in the last decade has been a Free(tm) operating system, and they're still gunning for what is essential the community. These things aren't incidental, they're continuous and Microsoft has shown no penchant for change. Yet, they release the XBOX, and the XBOX 360, and everyone is gushy and loves them all of the sudden. Does anyone even remember what they did to Bungie and Halo?
In reality, if the PS3 were $299 or $399, rootkits and batteries would be swept under the carpet, and people wouldn't care. But increase the numbers a little, despite being the same cost (or less) than your competitor with an equivalent featureset, and people are at your throat.
Assuming since he posted here on slashdot and in English, he can also read English, which means that he can import the games if he wants: PSP games are region-free.
You're whining there aren't weather effects in a 10-car, 2-track demo game? And that the... backgrounds are fake? You should be asking about how the cars handle, how good the physics are, and similar. Gran Turismo leans far more toward simulation racing.
If you want spectacular HD wrecks and destructible tracks and all that, get Full Auto 2... it's got all that and more.
A few impressions... GT:HD is decent, but I don't know if I'd call it the best-looking game the PS3 has to offer, but I can't comment too much on this as I'm still sadly playing in standard def. However, people previously commenting on how this was a high-res GT4 need to take a closer look. Any criticism directed toward it is rather silly, though; it's free, it's fun, and it looks good. You may want more, but come on, it's free.
That said, Resistance has been my main focus. I don't even like first-person shooters, normally. The polygon count is nice, but since I'm playing this in SD it's not really of primary concern; a really solid Insomniac shooter is. If you've ever played Ratchet and Clank, you know how Insomniac can put together a level and pace things: though far different than R&C, their style and skill is very evident. They toss lots of things to shoot at you, and give you lots of stuff to shoot with, which are the two fundamental things a shooter needs; they did this in R&C, and they did it again in Resistance. It's not some fundamentally different, revolutionary game; but it is a very fun FPS that has kept even me, who gets bored after minutes of play with other FPS's, interested enough to keep playing. I guess it gets a lot of the little things right.
The other game I have at the moment is Full Auto 2. This is a blast, too, pun not entirely unintended. To summarize, the game is basically the bastard child of Need for Speed and Twisted Metal. The races can feel intensely fast-paced, and the battle arenas play out much the same way as TM. The story is ignorable; I have. The one noticeable annoyance is what seems to be stuttery audio/video... but strangely, this only occurs during menu sequences and cutscenes. If it's an intentional effect, it's not a good one. Fortunately it's not a nuisance when you actually play the game.
Well, far before Apple (by about a decade) making Unix available to the common man, there was Linux. What was funny about that then was the unlikelihood of a kid having access to a Unix system. What was even funnier a few years later (by 97 or 98) was the fact that it was no longer unlikely! Kids, even 12-year-olds, had access to Linux and were using it and learning it.
Really, when I saw this one, I had to check the date on the article, because I thought it was quite old. The biggest examples of most of these are things like the first Mission Impossible, Independence Day, and as mentioned, Jurassic Park.
I'm not saying that those systems won't also have innovative games, but they won't be game-play innovations.
Ah yes, because all gameplay innovation stem directly from the controller. That's why the PS2 couldn't accomplish Grand Theft Auto, Katamari, Rez, or Okami.
Consider that the last major controller change (analog sticks, dual analog) brought about Ape Escape, which, while a great game, is essentially a Mario64 clone.
Mario64 itself was revolutionary. Not because of the controller---analog sticks are hardly new. It was because it changed the fundamental world, brought things into 3D, and did an amazing job of re-envisioning actual Mario gameplay in 3D. Would this have been possible without the analog stick? It would have been less pretty---but I finished Mario64 with all stars using a keyboard. Did the controller help? Yes.
But ask yourself: would the analog stick have changed anything if they'd added it to a souped-up SNES?
Different? How? Consider that Zelda, the premiere Wii title, and the only real reason for owning a Wii right now, is a GameCube port. It's essentially identical to the Cube version, except it uses a different controller. How is that in any significant way "different"?
A controller change has very low potential for any real sort of revolutionary, game-altering mechanic. It may make some games a bit easier to control. But it doesn't affect the core of what the game is---the depth of the virtual world---which where change that really has an effect happens.
Games like Okami, which use mechanics that are arguably best-suited for the DS or Wii, play perfectly well on a regular controller. Would it be neat to use the Wiimote or touchscreen for this? Yeah, it would be kinda neat. Would it be a game-altering experience? Hardly.
More CPU is not just about better graphics ("more polygons"). It's about more stuff happening in the world. More interactive physics, more realistic battles. Shooters where you can blow up anything and with hundreds of players onscreen. RPGs where you have bigger worlds and more going on; battle scenes with fine-grained maneuvers and the intensity of Advent Children. Racers with better physics simulation. This stuff is all CPU-bound, and doesn't really have anything to do with graphics (in the "shiny"/"more polygons" sense).
The PS3 will win over the hardcore gamers who have to have the fastest, most amazing machine available.
Or the gamers who, you know, like to have more than 3 games a year and care about more than Halo. It's not like the prices are going to stay fixed forever, and I know kids who have, on their own earnings, bought all three last-gen consoles.
My friends have long considered me to be a cynical bastard, because I always question the validity of everything. Nothing is ever what it seems, there is always some kind of not-so-well-hidden advertising, product pushing, and damn-near lying. [...] I don't shop and Wal*Mart because I think they are scumbags, I don't partake of anything Disney. But it seems that it is almost unavoidable these days.
Hell, I don't even know what my point is in posting...
Your post is probably some kind of not-so-well-hidden advertising, product pushing, or damn-near lying, if you ask me!!
PgSQL replication is weak, but then, everyone's replication is pretty weak. They can---and don't get me wrong, they should---work on it. But at the same time, they can't work magic. They can't make everything magically synchronous all of the time, or efficiently try and do every now() or rand() across the network against a single source or other silly things the parent poster wants.
Slony also doesn't replicate "large objects"; I don't know what they are,
You're a DBA and you don't know what large objects are?
but as a MySQL admin
Oh, right. Not really a DBA
Let's see:
"pgpool -- Max 2 servers, and they're not really in sync---commands like now() or rand() will be executed independently on the mirrored machines, causing them to have different data." One: keep your clocks in sync. Two: how can you tell if rand() isn't "in sync"? You run it on each server and you get different results? You know what rand() means, right?
"Slony I -- DB schema changes not replicated, nor are "large objects"." One: how often does your schema change, and do you really need automatic replication? Two: If you don't even know what large objects are, why do you have a problem with this?
"PGCluster -- Synchronous multi-master. We don't want synchronous, and don't need multi-master. Documentation patchy, didn't appear to be currently maintained." So don't use it.
"CommandPrompt "Mammoth" -- Documentation "in the works". PostgreSQL 8.0.7. Tables can't use "inheritance". Schema changes not replicated (at least not table creation, not sure about the rest). Only 1 db replicated, not all dbs. Tables must have primary keys. Have to list tables in config file." One: MySQL doesn't have inheritence, you're not losing anything. Two: see above about oft-changing schemas. (Otherwise, this sounds like a very high-level replication of tables, probably using simple scripts or triggers. If it doesn't suit, don't use.)
Others listed are older and not relevant.
I just fear that when replication is done in a third-party fashion, it loses the tight integration with the dbms necessary to make it work truly seamlessly, and that it isn't maintained as well as the core product.
Funny, I fear a database that has only rudimentary data integrity checks. Here's the real question for you: Why do you need replication? It doesn't magically work the way you think it does, even in MySQL (see under "Problems Not Solved"). Quote: "MySQL's replication isn't the ideal vehicle for transmitting real-time or nearly real-time data". Every replicated database can lose synchronization and no one can honestly guarantee otherwise. Even Oracle.
Slony-I will pretty much give you what you already have. My guess is that you don't really need replication at all; hot standby servers will suffice in case of failure. The rest comes down to query tuning or faster hardware (or a database that does faster nontrivial queries, like PostgreSQL). (And don't complain about costs if you're already buying servers for replication. If you have real data that's making you money here, hardware is cheap; if you don't, you probably don't really need any of this to begin with.) If you need true realtime synchronization, replication is not an option.
Finally, while I'm not a MySQL fan, since you don't seem to give any real reason for wanting to migrate, why bother? You already have a working system and hardware investment. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it comes time to upgrade down the line, and the features justify the move, then maybe consider it.
this is true of everyone who has ever lived. including you. including me. it's simple human nature
This is, in fact, my first point.
however, this self-censorship, whether by individuals or cliques, is a different subject matter than censorship by a government entity.
This comes back to our own self-censorship (and, really, our own cultural/governmental censorship). We see through the "authoritarian censorship is bad" filter, which ironically comes from an authority itself.
My second point is simply that neither one is better. They are both censorship. To criticize for one and accept the other is hypocritical.
2+2 does not equal 5, even for very high values of 2 and very low values of 5.
The article goes into a discussion about how the 'sanitized' information is so prevalent in Chinese education that it is seen as the 'truth'.
HAH! I love all the discussion about Chinese censorship. The argument is that we are free, and see things objectively---but that is not true. We are merely free to choose the censorship we prefer.
I do not mean that we don't have access to "uncensored" information. Nor do I mean that it is forced upon us by anyone. I mean that we prefer censorship; we prefer to see things through filters that support what we want to believe. If you do not think this, just spend a week on Digg, or other "self-policing" sites. People do not want objectivity, they want the prominence of their own subjectivity.
The Chinese government merely provides this as a government service, so the widest possible audience is sated. It's not worse. It's not even different. Consider first whether people are really, truly unhappy.
(Note, I don't actually believe we should have government-sponsored censorship. There is some hyperbole here by design. But really, this is not as far from reality as you may think.)
There's the lack of a supply, the broken demo units, the broken global launch promise, the small number of launch titles, their Live-like network mess, the backwards compatability problems, the thefts, the shootings, the riots, the huge ebay prices, the hiring of homeless people to stand in line for scalpers, the arrogant statements by the people in charge of Sony (You'll but it without games, lol), the loss of rumble for "innovative" motion technology that was around at the time of the PS1, the really weird and freaky marketing campaign and finally the rumors that the 400k launch systems were really on the order of 150k.
Lack of supply: Shared by the wii/360.
Broken demo units: Because that really affects retail.
Broken global launch promise: Neither the Wii nor 360 had a global launch, either.
Small number of launch titles: Just like the Wii/360.
Live-like network mess: What mess? Everything works. It's free. It does what they said. Just because it's not hyped like Live doesn't make it a mess.
Backward compatibility problems: Compared to the 360, this is a joke. (And the Wii, really---you can't insert your N64 carts now, can you? No, you re-buy your games for the VC.) This is comparable to PS2 backward compatibility problems; some titles don't work, ongoing work will bring things closer to 100%. Even the PS2 Slim has issues with some older PS2 games.
"the thefts, the shootings, the riots, the huge ebay prices, the hiring of homeless people to stand in line for scalpers": All orchestrated by Sony, clearly!
"the arrogant statements by the people in charge of Sony": Yeah because that affects the console. And Sony obviously has a monopoly on arrogance; Microsoft and Nintendo are so cuddly and humble.
Lack of rumble: Wow. Name 2 games besides Gran Turismo and Metal Gear Solid titles that actually use this significantly well. See if you can bring that list to 10. When you can't, realize that a feature less than 10 out of 1500+ games use is not really a big loss. Would it be nice? Yeah. Is it a big loss? No.
The sacrifice for of motion techology: What? So you'd rather have vibration than motion sensing? Or you'd rather Sony bow to silly patents? Oh I forgot, it's Sony on Tuesday, so silly patents are OK.
"finally the rumors that the 400k launch systems were really on the order of 150k": Ah yes rumors.
In short, your list is idiotic. Rumors and irrelevance. And you used "limited availability" twice (first and last items!). Compared to bricked consoles these are hardly bad. None of them mean the console you brought home is useless or limited---which both bricked consoles and limited accessories (both controllers and cables) do.
I don't understand the people who attack Wikipedia....
Why the fuck would anyone want to piss on it? Don't like it? Shut up and go to a library.
It has to do with why the "people who disagree are morons" article is wrong: if everyone could suddenly identify who the geniuses were, the not-so-geniuses would immediately kill them all out of fear, or jealously, or whatever.
Wikipedia is just a repository for information and who is informed on various subjects (whether the information is right or wrong, agreeable or disagreeable). There may be good reasons to hate it, but they're not the real reasons.
The wii just gets positive articles because it's very hard to bash it (beyond LOL OLD GRAPHICS) and the PS3 is just a complete mess which is hard to complement.
Wait, how is the PS3 a "complete mess" again (beyond LOL $$)? There haven't been reports of overheating (a la 360), damaging discs (a la 360), broken windows/TVs/controllers (a la Wii), bricked consoles (a la Wii), unavailable controllers (a la Wii), or unavailable component cables (a la Wii). There haven't even been Disc Read Errors (a la PS2). Both consoles share general unavailability (and if you believe expense is a factor, it should offset the margin of difference).
More and more of the content I am finding and enjoying is made by people for the pure fun of it in the hopes that other people will like it.
There is also the implicit incentive of recognition. This is very, very important. It is, perhaps, the main reason people work for lots of money, get big houses, build their careers, etc. Recognition. Fame. If you have a system like Communism which strips this out, which stifles creativity and individuality, then there is no such incentive. This is Sociology 101.
The trick about free software is that it's easy and instant recognition without the need to be rich or grovel your way up the corporate chain; you get fame based directly off your ideas, your work, your effort. "Extreme #2" above (wrongly) excludes this possibility; it is however correct in that the broad population is still unlikely to create stuff, simply because the majority of people don't seem to be the creative, self-motivated sort.
It is perhaps more important to have a continuing struggle between these extremes simply to keep things dynamic and working than it is to actually settle on a solution that works for everyone, especially a less-than-ideal solution.
Slashdot Mirror
This is true; however whereas binary package distributions tend to work-or-not-work, Gentoo provides you with pretty much everything you need to fix something when it doesn't. It's less a matter of "perfect" and more a matter of "perfectly transparent".
Yeah, but people need to get real. All of these things are simply excuses. The rootkit? Contractor for Sony/BMG... not high-level insidious conspiracy, and nothing to do with SCE. Bad batteries? Warned, recalled, and hardly something intentional.
Look at Microsoft. They have a long-term history of abuse, of which most slashdotters should be aware. This is stuff from the highest levels from the earliest days, designed to slit the throats of competitors and overwhelm the market. IBM? DR? Stac? Lotus? Netscape? The list goes on, both big names and small. Hell, SCO is still going on. We're talking about a company whose only real competition in the last decade has been a Free(tm) operating system, and they're still gunning for what is essential the community. These things aren't incidental, they're continuous and Microsoft has shown no penchant for change. Yet, they release the XBOX, and the XBOX 360, and everyone is gushy and loves them all of the sudden. Does anyone even remember what they did to Bungie and Halo?
In reality, if the PS3 were $299 or $399, rootkits and batteries would be swept under the carpet, and people wouldn't care. But increase the numbers a little, despite being the same cost (or less) than your competitor with an equivalent featureset, and people are at your throat.
Idiots.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
Assuming since he posted here on slashdot and in English, he can also read English, which means that he can import the games if he wants: PSP games are region-free.
Er... 2007 will also have D&D Tactics and Disgaea for the PSP off the top of my head. More from IGN's release list:
All of these are Q1 releases, including D&D Tactics, so that's six RPGs before April. Check the above list or RPGamer's list for more.
You're whining there aren't weather effects in a 10-car, 2-track demo game? And that the ... backgrounds are fake? You should be asking about how the cars handle, how good the physics are, and similar. Gran Turismo leans far more toward simulation racing.
If you want spectacular HD wrecks and destructible tracks and all that, get Full Auto 2... it's got all that and more.
A few impressions ... GT:HD is decent, but I don't know if I'd call it the best-looking game the PS3 has to offer, but I can't comment too much on this as I'm still sadly playing in standard def. However, people previously commenting on how this was a high-res GT4 need to take a closer look. Any criticism directed toward it is rather silly, though; it's free, it's fun, and it looks good. You may want more, but come on, it's free.
That said, Resistance has been my main focus. I don't even like first-person shooters, normally. The polygon count is nice, but since I'm playing this in SD it's not really of primary concern; a really solid Insomniac shooter is. If you've ever played Ratchet and Clank, you know how Insomniac can put together a level and pace things: though far different than R&C, their style and skill is very evident. They toss lots of things to shoot at you, and give you lots of stuff to shoot with, which are the two fundamental things a shooter needs; they did this in R&C, and they did it again in Resistance. It's not some fundamentally different, revolutionary game; but it is a very fun FPS that has kept even me, who gets bored after minutes of play with other FPS's, interested enough to keep playing. I guess it gets a lot of the little things right.
The other game I have at the moment is Full Auto 2. This is a blast, too, pun not entirely unintended. To summarize, the game is basically the bastard child of Need for Speed and Twisted Metal. The races can feel intensely fast-paced, and the battle arenas play out much the same way as TM. The story is ignorable; I have. The one noticeable annoyance is what seems to be stuttery audio/video ... but strangely, this only occurs during menu sequences and cutscenes. If it's an intentional effect, it's not a good one. Fortunately it's not a nuisance when you actually play the game.
Well, far before Apple (by about a decade) making Unix available to the common man, there was Linux. What was funny about that then was the unlikelihood of a kid having access to a Unix system. What was even funnier a few years later (by 97 or 98) was the fact that it was no longer unlikely! Kids, even 12-year-olds, had access to Linux and were using it and learning it.
Really, when I saw this one, I had to check the date on the article, because I thought it was quite old. The biggest examples of most of these are things like the first Mission Impossible, Independence Day, and as mentioned, Jurassic Park.
Ah yes, because all gameplay innovation stem directly from the controller. That's why the PS2 couldn't accomplish Grand Theft Auto, Katamari, Rez, or Okami.
Consider that the last major controller change (analog sticks, dual analog) brought about Ape Escape, which, while a great game, is essentially a Mario64 clone.
Mario64 itself was revolutionary. Not because of the controller---analog sticks are hardly new. It was because it changed the fundamental world, brought things into 3D, and did an amazing job of re-envisioning actual Mario gameplay in 3D. Would this have been possible without the analog stick? It would have been less pretty---but I finished Mario64 with all stars using a keyboard. Did the controller help? Yes.
But ask yourself: would the analog stick have changed anything if they'd added it to a souped-up SNES?
Different? How? Consider that Zelda, the premiere Wii title, and the only real reason for owning a Wii right now, is a GameCube port. It's essentially identical to the Cube version, except it uses a different controller. How is that in any significant way "different"?
A controller change has very low potential for any real sort of revolutionary, game-altering mechanic. It may make some games a bit easier to control. But it doesn't affect the core of what the game is---the depth of the virtual world---which where change that really has an effect happens.
Games like Okami, which use mechanics that are arguably best-suited for the DS or Wii, play perfectly well on a regular controller. Would it be neat to use the Wiimote or touchscreen for this? Yeah, it would be kinda neat. Would it be a game-altering experience? Hardly.
More CPU is not just about better graphics ("more polygons"). It's about more stuff happening in the world. More interactive physics, more realistic battles. Shooters where you can blow up anything and with hundreds of players onscreen. RPGs where you have bigger worlds and more going on; battle scenes with fine-grained maneuvers and the intensity of Advent Children. Racers with better physics simulation. This stuff is all CPU-bound, and doesn't really have anything to do with graphics (in the "shiny"/"more polygons" sense).
Or the gamers who, you know, like to have more than 3 games a year and care about more than Halo. It's not like the prices are going to stay fixed forever, and I know kids who have, on their own earnings, bought all three last-gen consoles.
Oh really? Most of those are $300+ premium, unless you somehow believe the PS3 sells for $899 retail.
Because when Microsoft, who funds SCO, makes shady deals followed by spurious claims engages in viral marketing, it's OK.
But when Sony, who delivers Linux on their console does it, it's BAD.
Yeah must be Wednesday again.
Your post is probably some kind of not-so-well-hidden advertising, product pushing, or damn-near lying, if you ask me!!
PgSQL replication is weak, but then, everyone's replication is pretty weak. They can---and don't get me wrong, they should---work on it. But at the same time, they can't work magic. They can't make everything magically synchronous all of the time, or efficiently try and do every now() or rand() across the network against a single source or other silly things the parent poster wants.
You're a DBA and you don't know what large objects are?
Oh, right. Not really a DBA
Let's see:
Others listed are older and not relevant.
Funny, I fear a database that has only rudimentary data integrity checks. Here's the real question for you: Why do you need replication? It doesn't magically work the way you think it does, even in MySQL (see under "Problems Not Solved"). Quote: "MySQL's replication isn't the ideal vehicle for transmitting real-time or nearly real-time data". Every replicated database can lose synchronization and no one can honestly guarantee otherwise. Even Oracle.
Slony-I will pretty much give you what you already have. My guess is that you don't really need replication at all; hot standby servers will suffice in case of failure. The rest comes down to query tuning or faster hardware (or a database that does faster nontrivial queries, like PostgreSQL). (And don't complain about costs if you're already buying servers for replication. If you have real data that's making you money here, hardware is cheap; if you don't, you probably don't really need any of this to begin with.) If you need true realtime synchronization, replication is not an option.
Finally, while I'm not a MySQL fan, since you don't seem to give any real reason for wanting to migrate, why bother? You already have a working system and hardware investment. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it comes time to upgrade down the line, and the features justify the move, then maybe consider it.
In summary: meh.
This is, in fact, my first point.
This comes back to our own self-censorship (and, really, our own cultural/governmental censorship). We see through the "authoritarian censorship is bad" filter, which ironically comes from an authority itself.
My second point is simply that neither one is better. They are both censorship. To criticize for one and accept the other is hypocritical.
2+2 does not equal 5, even for very high values of 2 and very low values of 5.
Please choose:
Be an adult and don't change the subject, please answer #1 or #2.
HAH! I love all the discussion about Chinese censorship. The argument is that we are free, and see things objectively---but that is not true. We are merely free to choose the censorship we prefer.
I do not mean that we don't have access to "uncensored" information. Nor do I mean that it is forced upon us by anyone. I mean that we prefer censorship; we prefer to see things through filters that support what we want to believe. If you do not think this, just spend a week on Digg, or other "self-policing" sites. People do not want objectivity, they want the prominence of their own subjectivity.
The Chinese government merely provides this as a government service, so the widest possible audience is sated. It's not worse. It's not even different. Consider first whether people are really, truly unhappy.
(Note, I don't actually believe we should have government-sponsored censorship. There is some hyperbole here by design. But really, this is not as far from reality as you may think.)
In short, your list is idiotic. Rumors and irrelevance. And you used "limited availability" twice (first and last items!). Compared to bricked consoles these are hardly bad. None of them mean the console you brought home is useless or limited---which both bricked consoles and limited accessories (both controllers and cables) do.
It has to do with why the "people who disagree are morons" article is wrong: if everyone could suddenly identify who the geniuses were, the not-so-geniuses would immediately kill them all out of fear, or jealously, or whatever.
Wikipedia is just a repository for information and who is informed on various subjects (whether the information is right or wrong, agreeable or disagreeable). There may be good reasons to hate it, but they're not the real reasons.
Wait, how is the PS3 a "complete mess" again (beyond LOL $$)? There haven't been reports of overheating (a la 360), damaging discs (a la 360), broken windows/TVs/controllers (a la Wii), bricked consoles (a la Wii), unavailable controllers (a la Wii), or unavailable component cables (a la Wii). There haven't even been Disc Read Errors (a la PS2). Both consoles share general unavailability (and if you believe expense is a factor, it should offset the margin of difference).
And here I thought revolutions happened because people decided to revolt against the norm. Now I know they're just happy little accidents.
1976 called. It wants Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists back.
There is also the implicit incentive of recognition. This is very, very important. It is, perhaps, the main reason people work for lots of money, get big houses, build their careers, etc. Recognition. Fame. If you have a system like Communism which strips this out, which stifles creativity and individuality, then there is no such incentive. This is Sociology 101.
The trick about free software is that it's easy and instant recognition without the need to be rich or grovel your way up the corporate chain; you get fame based directly off your ideas, your work, your effort. "Extreme #2" above (wrongly) excludes this possibility; it is however correct in that the broad population is still unlikely to create stuff, simply because the majority of people don't seem to be the creative, self-motivated sort.
It is perhaps more important to have a continuing struggle between these extremes simply to keep things dynamic and working than it is to actually settle on a solution that works for everyone, especially a less-than-ideal solution.