Do you promise not to complain when an update to the library breaks the game?
It behooves the platform vendor to not break the platform for software that is dependent on it. That is, presumably, the purpose of an LTS release. Not that this is impossible, Microsoft updates have broken software on Windows, but it is unlikely to happen in a way that doesn't blow up a lot of other stuff.
Or when the game fails to run on your favored niche distro?
Bonch comes out of the woodwork to defend Apple and attack Linux/Google every so often. He relishes in engaging in character assassination.
No, we don't. He's hurting the movement.
And we should replace him with what, people who will be more moderate and acquiesce more to the extremists already in power? Extremists like Apple, who have a fetish for end-user control and lock down?
But why anybody listens to RMS anymore is beyond me when its so obvious he hates anybody making a cent on FOSS.
Which is plainly not true. The classic model of selling software licenses simply doesn't work with FOSS. There are more than a few who do make money, but like any business you have to work hard to do so.
The guy is a failed developer whose only two projects, eMacs and GCC, were both forked AWAY from him
No, this is your hatred speaking, not reality. He is involved in emacs and gcc development even today.
he is a self proclaimed "squatter at MIT" who has admitted that he doesn't even surf the net and has demonstrated ever increasingly bizarre behavior, such as just walking out of interviews where a reporter dares not to use "his language" in the matter he proscribes and of course the infamous "pulling off his socks and eating toe funk in the middle of the stage during a lecture" so WHY pray tell does anybody still listen to him?
Ad-hominem, all of it. Stick to the discussion at hand, and stop letting your rage and hatred get in the way.
But I guess we can't. There are too many loud, irrational, hate-filled people to address his points. They'd prefer to attack the man than his argument.
as though that somehow mitigates the harm he does from his soap box.
Harm? Or simply ire from the people who disagree with him and react viscerally and violently instead of rationally?
Instead of doing something like taking the bull by the horns and making a slick Android distro that embodies his values AND is friendly to non-geeks
Even RMS would tell you that's not possible so long as Android can be closed.
he froths at the mouth at any company or group that makes moves which earn them some money and make things easier for non-technical users.
Bullshit. The easiest way to get him riled up is to do something that exploits the end user, or in some way limits them for the sole purpose of expanding the bottom line. And frankly, as much as I like Canonical that's exactly what the lenses do.
The whole point of the GPL is to force anyone who uses GPLed code to GPL their associated code as well.
It's a requirement that you should make yourself aware of once you decide to make changes and redistribute them. You don't have to agree to anything just to use or even modify the software.
If Stallman could think of a legally binding way to make everyone GPL their code he's certainly given the clear impression that he'd do it.
And if the RIAA and MPAA could charge me every time I make a copy of my music and videos from one device of mine to another, they've given the clear impression they'd do it. Neither has happened, your point is irrelevant.
In fact, if I remember correctly, he says in at least one of his essays that he believes non-open sourced code should be illegal.
And the major media corporations would like Copyright to last forever. Well, at least one group has gotten their way, I suppose that's a good thing?
In terms of following extremists, at least RMS has good intentions and your freedom in mind. Instead the world follows extremists who seek only to exploit you. And you attack one who would defend you.
Bruce, apparently, doesn't see the value that Canonical provides in making a distribution that is probably the least painful distro to use. I like the technology behind Debian, but I can't stand using the distro directly. Even with Fedora I get errors and things broken out of the gate.
Rejecting organized efforts to make progress on certain objectives (desktop, etc.) because they're run by for-profit companies only serves to shoot yourself in the foot and keep Linux (particularly desktop Linux) marginalized and ignored.
But if you're going to live in the Bay Area for several years, you'd better be earning 80K out of the gate and move up, just because the cost of living is so high. I started out at 60k and am up a lot higher up in the Sacramento region.
That said, I think the topic here is much more applicable: all wages are flat or declining, and it's been happening for the past 30 years as most of the gains in productivity have been trapped by the richest in the country.
People aren't hearded in to giving up their freedoms.
Sure they are. All the companies with power have to do is push tech in a certain direction and ensure that what options are made available serve their purposes. Most people will go along without asking any questions, in many cases because they don't know what questions to ask.
There are certain freedoms that those people just don't *need* to begin with.
Says who? I'm sure a justification can be made to suggest you don't *need* any freedom you have.
My mother, who has an iPhone, isn't handcuffed - if anything, the device liberates her into using technology that she wouldn't otherwise use in in the modern world.
That she doesn't venture far enough to reach the fence doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Suggesting that the fence must exist for it to be usable for her is an unfounded argument so, please, don't go there as so many do.
There are products across the spectrum that address the balance between usable and the freedom to do whatever you'd like.
Not really. All I've seen is an increase in lock down. More restrictions, not fewer.
Just because manufacturers lock down their devices doesn't mean there's not a suitable audience that doesn't benefit.
Lock down that puts the end-user perpetually on the outside of the security model is never intended to benefit the audience except may be as an unintentional side effect.
So if the technology is 'pathetic' and 'non-essential', who cares? Just don't use it.
Because there's no reason the patents should have been issued. People trivially infringe upon them without realizing it, then get hammered with patent suits. And you never know until it's too late.
Apple is using all means necessary to stop KIRFs.
And they'll sell patents to troll firms, who will use them to attack their competitors. Not design patents but utility patents.
Why'd all the pro-Patent Apple White Knights come out of the woodwork?
no, you're just dumb and believe the click bait nonsense on the internet
Ah yes, we're all wrong about IV.
samsung, apple and everyone else has design patents on every single product they sell. these are prefaced by the letter D before the patent number. the design patent covers the shape, color scheme and every detail you can see about the product. samsung has D patents on fridges and microwaves.
Design patents are of least concern. The primary problem are crappy utility patents.
Those aren't the patents of concern. The problematic ones are those held by companies like Apple, that aren't essential but are rather pathetic and used as weapons against competitors. Let alone the hazards of patent trolls armed by companies like Microsoft, Apple, and IV.
most of these patent articles are just FUD and click bait
Even when the security of the platform works against you?
You don't pledge allegiance to a vendor, you use their wares until it doesn't satisfy your personal requirements.
Far too many people place convenience and flash above personal security and privacy. This has the nasty side effect of impacting those who do care and stripping their ability to demand (and get) the ability to assume that responsibility.
Certainly they should be much higher, given that we immediately put ten+ years of two wars and the bailouts of failed companies on the public debt. And here we have Goldman Sachs' CEO demanding that the average person "expect less" of their retirement. While he, undoubtedly, will live the high life daily.
Shorter Vint Cerf: Some proposals would actually allow sovereign governments to enforce their sovereignty, as bad as that may be.
Yup, and that's a bad thing. No accommodations should be made to make things easy for censorious, oppressive governments to act in such a manner. All the burden should be on their end, rather than worked into some sort of legalistic framework ripe for abuse.
Of course governments can censor speech and cut off Internet access, that's their prerogative.
But is it the prerogative of the people in that country? Or is it a government acting unilaterally for the sake of retaining power? Should we be accepting or tolerant of that?
How do you think an American government would react if it was told by the UN, or Mexico, that it was forbidden from arresting undocumented migrants, because such action would infringe upon an individual's absolute freedom of movement, as protected by some UN declaration of human rights?
This is an idiotic comparison.
Mexico/UN: Hey, stop arresting and deporting people who bypass legal channels to enter your country!
vs
US: Hey, stop fucking with the internet in your bid to silence opposition and retain power over the populace of your nation!
No, if anything there should be protocols put in place to ensure that no one could ever be sure that information was being cleanly filtered, to the point that the only option for these countries would be to vanish from the net entirely, and suffer the requisite economic damage for doing so.
To reiterate my comment posted on Ars two days ago when this popped:
So it's sort of a mix between traditional flash technology and the mechanism by which PCM works.
PCM does short pulses of between 400C and 700C to change the resistivity of the chalcogenide material, so generating these temperatures on microcircuitry like this isn't new.
*PCM = Phase Change Memory;
I suspect that 800C isn't out of reach, and the elements can be much coarser given you don't need them to alter a bit.
The problem with Google's solution is that it does not do just what I described, split the security auditing from the distribution.
No, my point was that the stores with serious restrictions are not purely for security purposes. Google does not have a walled garden, Microsoft and Apple do, and they do because they want 100% control over the platform. Beyond security, it lets them play gatekeeper and impose a toll on both developers and users they haven't been able to before.
Every store is going to perform its own vetting, there's no real way to divorce it from the companies except in Google's case, and they'll do it anyway if they want their reputation to mean anything (and it needs improving.) Microsoft and Apple will never budge, as they want you to be their only option. Apple may have pushed to remove DRM on music, but they haven't made a peep about ebooks or movies, let alone the effective DRM that iOS as a whole imposes.
The interesting thing here is that Microsoft, Google, and Apple are all building app stores with serious restrictions as a way to improve security, but aside from making stronger brands and improving user experience in removing malware, they don't get a lot out of the restrictiveness.
Google is largely exempt from this implication so long as Android continues to come with a simple check-box for side loading software.
If we could persuade them to split these apart and allow third party security auditing that applies a filter to the distribution system and then put in place policies of completely open distribution, where they distribute anything... but by default apply a user editable filter that removes all the same things they do now it would still solve their security and battery woes for the mass market (potentially improving it by making it competitive) but also open up distribution for third parties like Steam.
For Android this is already possible, as evidenced by the Amazon App Store. For Microsoft and Apple, you'll have to force the issue legally. They're quite content to maintain lock-down on their "current" platforms. I say current because Microsoft has extended the walled garden to x86, but only for formerly-Metro applications.
If you bring closed, proprietary, DRM-infested software onto it, you're just turning it into another Windows; you might as well just go back to it.
Nonsense. Bringing in Steam and closed source games doesn't turn a GNU/Linux platform into a closed source OS. The closed bits have to behave and accept that I control the system.
you might as well just go back to it.
I'm trying to get away from it. Games moving to Linux gives me more reason to leave.
what we need to get these people to do is to give us the code to their engines (even if under a mostly proprietary license).
Some do, eventually.
that way we will be able to continue enjoying what makes GNU/Linux attractive and play games as well.
How about we move games, and users, to Linux first? Silly absolutist stances accomplish nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
If only it was that simple.
It behooves the platform vendor to not break the platform for software that is dependent on it. That is, presumably, the purpose of an LTS release. Not that this is impossible, Microsoft updates have broken software on Windows, but it is unlikely to happen in a way that doesn't blow up a lot of other stuff.
That's your problem and no one else's.
Ah, ad-hominem attacks. Ad-hominem attacks everywhere.
Bonch comes out of the woodwork to defend Apple and attack Linux/Google every so often. He relishes in engaging in character assassination.
And we should replace him with what, people who will be more moderate and acquiesce more to the extremists already in power? Extremists like Apple, who have a fetish for end-user control and lock down?
Which is plainly not true. The classic model of selling software licenses simply doesn't work with FOSS. There are more than a few who do make money, but like any business you have to work hard to do so.
No, this is your hatred speaking, not reality. He is involved in emacs and gcc development even today.
Ad-hominem, all of it. Stick to the discussion at hand, and stop letting your rage and hatred get in the way.
But I guess we can't. There are too many loud, irrational, hate-filled people to address his points. They'd prefer to attack the man than his argument.
Harm? Or simply ire from the people who disagree with him and react viscerally and violently instead of rationally?
Even RMS would tell you that's not possible so long as Android can be closed.
Bullshit. The easiest way to get him riled up is to do something that exploits the end user, or in some way limits them for the sole purpose of expanding the bottom line. And frankly, as much as I like Canonical that's exactly what the lenses do.
It's a requirement that you should make yourself aware of once you decide to make changes and redistribute them. You don't have to agree to anything just to use or even modify the software.
And if the RIAA and MPAA could charge me every time I make a copy of my music and videos from one device of mine to another, they've given the clear impression they'd do it. Neither has happened, your point is irrelevant.
And the major media corporations would like Copyright to last forever. Well, at least one group has gotten their way, I suppose that's a good thing?
In terms of following extremists, at least RMS has good intentions and your freedom in mind. Instead the world follows extremists who seek only to exploit you. And you attack one who would defend you.
He wants that but doesn't force you to do so as a condition of using GPL software.
Bruce, apparently, doesn't see the value that Canonical provides in making a distribution that is probably the least painful distro to use. I like the technology behind Debian, but I can't stand using the distro directly. Even with Fedora I get errors and things broken out of the gate.
Rejecting organized efforts to make progress on certain objectives (desktop, etc.) because they're run by for-profit companies only serves to shoot yourself in the foot and keep Linux (particularly desktop Linux) marginalized and ignored.
AT was/is as well. He means 5-pin DIN to PS/2.
But if you're going to live in the Bay Area for several years, you'd better be earning 80K out of the gate and move up, just because the cost of living is so high. I started out at 60k and am up a lot higher up in the Sacramento region.
That said, I think the topic here is much more applicable: all wages are flat or declining, and it's been happening for the past 30 years as most of the gains in productivity have been trapped by the richest in the country.
Mistaken about what?
He's been pretty opposed to anything that artificially limits people's ability to create and learn.
Sure they are. All the companies with power have to do is push tech in a certain direction and ensure that what options are made available serve their purposes. Most people will go along without asking any questions, in many cases because they don't know what questions to ask.
Says who? I'm sure a justification can be made to suggest you don't *need* any freedom you have.
That she doesn't venture far enough to reach the fence doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Suggesting that the fence must exist for it to be usable for her is an unfounded argument so, please, don't go there as so many do.
Not really. All I've seen is an increase in lock down. More restrictions, not fewer.
Lock down that puts the end-user perpetually on the outside of the security model is never intended to benefit the audience except may be as an unintentional side effect.
What about the patent trolls? Oh, right, this is Apple White Knight hour.
Because there's no reason the patents should have been issued. People trivially infringe upon them without realizing it, then get hammered with patent suits. And you never know until it's too late.
And they'll sell patents to troll firms, who will use them to attack their competitors. Not design patents but utility patents.
Why'd all the pro-Patent Apple White Knights come out of the woodwork?
Ah yes, we're all wrong about IV.
Design patents are of least concern. The primary problem are crappy utility patents.
Again, what patent trolling firm do you work for?
Those aren't the patents of concern. The problematic ones are those held by companies like Apple, that aren't essential but are rather pathetic and used as weapons against competitors. Let alone the hazards of patent trolls armed by companies like Microsoft, Apple, and IV.
Which patent trolling firm do you work for?
Even when the security of the platform works against you?
Far too many people place convenience and flash above personal security and privacy. This has the nasty side effect of impacting those who do care and stripping their ability to demand (and get) the ability to assume that responsibility.
Global, except for the labor market.
Capital flows like water, and the richest among us along with it. Average person? With great difficulty, likely impossible for most.
Increase by how much?
Certainly they should be much higher, given that we immediately put ten+ years of two wars and the bailouts of failed companies on the public debt. And here we have Goldman Sachs' CEO demanding that the average person "expect less" of their retirement. While he, undoubtedly, will live the high life daily.
Yup, and that's a bad thing. No accommodations should be made to make things easy for censorious, oppressive governments to act in such a manner. All the burden should be on their end, rather than worked into some sort of legalistic framework ripe for abuse.
But is it the prerogative of the people in that country? Or is it a government acting unilaterally for the sake of retaining power? Should we be accepting or tolerant of that?
This is an idiotic comparison.
Mexico/UN: Hey, stop arresting and deporting people who bypass legal channels to enter your country!
vs
US: Hey, stop fucking with the internet in your bid to silence opposition and retain power over the populace of your nation!
No, if anything there should be protocols put in place to ensure that no one could ever be sure that information was being cleanly filtered, to the point that the only option for these countries would be to vanish from the net entirely, and suffer the requisite economic damage for doing so.
Steam Pipe
To reiterate my comment posted on Ars two days ago when this popped:
So it's sort of a mix between traditional flash technology and the mechanism by which PCM works.
PCM does short pulses of between 400C and 700C to change the resistivity of the chalcogenide material, so generating these temperatures on microcircuitry like this isn't new.
*PCM = Phase Change Memory;
I suspect that 800C isn't out of reach, and the elements can be much coarser given you don't need them to alter a bit.
No, my point was that the stores with serious restrictions are not purely for security purposes. Google does not have a walled garden, Microsoft and Apple do, and they do because they want 100% control over the platform. Beyond security, it lets them play gatekeeper and impose a toll on both developers and users they haven't been able to before.
Every store is going to perform its own vetting, there's no real way to divorce it from the companies except in Google's case, and they'll do it anyway if they want their reputation to mean anything (and it needs improving.) Microsoft and Apple will never budge, as they want you to be their only option. Apple may have pushed to remove DRM on music, but they haven't made a peep about ebooks or movies, let alone the effective DRM that iOS as a whole imposes.
Google is largely exempt from this implication so long as Android continues to come with a simple check-box for side loading software.
For Android this is already possible, as evidenced by the Amazon App Store. For Microsoft and Apple, you'll have to force the issue legally. They're quite content to maintain lock-down on their "current" platforms. I say current because Microsoft has extended the walled garden to x86, but only for formerly-Metro applications.
Nonsense. Bringing in Steam and closed source games doesn't turn a GNU/Linux platform into a closed source OS. The closed bits have to behave and accept that I control the system.
I'm trying to get away from it. Games moving to Linux gives me more reason to leave.
Some do, eventually.
How about we move games, and users, to Linux first? Silly absolutist stances accomplish nothing.