Eh, 2.4 has been out a long time too but the kernel isn't the only piece of software that can be buggy in a distribution.
Saying that there are few bugs is based on trying the release candidates and staying up to date with cooker before the release. In 9.1 most things really work and they do it well. That cannot be said for all Mandrake releases in the past. 9.0 had some issues for example, the worst of them being that supermount was broken.
Having used all the release candidates and the final from cooker I can say that 9.1 has less bugs than 9.0 or 8.1 for example. I'd say it seems to be of the same high quality that 8.2 was. Definitely the best Mandrake release I've used.
What they expect is to release some games for Linux people to play, no more. Their approach is very different to Loki's - they're not attempting to port every AAA title in existence to Linux, they look for quality titles that they can get for a price that will still let them profit even with the current (small) size of the Linux gaming community.
They're not targeting the people who want to play every new game that exists on the face of the earth like Loki seems to have attempted. (ie. hardcore gamers)
And yes, I believe LGP is managed better. Michael Simms has an idea of the kind of demand there is and will be as he also runs tuxgames.com, *the* Linux game reseller. He also watched Loki do it's mistakes in the past and I have no doubt that he doesn't plan on repeating them.
By the way, they already contacted the publishers of Tribes 3 here. They promised to get in touch about it.:)
There's an interesting transcript of an IRC interview with Michael Simms that I've been suprised to not see on Slashdot here. Apparently they're going to assign one of their developers to improve some GPL titles up to commercial quality. Very interesting stuff.
This is about developing a commercial Linux title from scratch, having it as the main (but not necessarily the only) release platform.
It's a Linux Game Publishing sponsored attempt to form a new Linux-centric game development company. Something that hasn't been done before. LGP already does what you're talking about. Their latest port is Cyberlore's Majesty has just gone gold and there's a demo available. Looks very promising.
don't you think that the molested person may not be entirely happy if the photo material that documents their abuse is widely available and every child abuser is watching it?
Also, downloading the image on freenet will distribute it even more.
With that said, there was a discussion when freenet rc1 came out on kuro5hin. Someone there pointed out that while on freenet it is guaranteed to be impossible to censor child porn, you will never be able to remove it entirely from the internet either, because in many cases the content is in countries that don't care anyway. So the internet is just as bad. Maybe even worse, since child porn will gradually fade away on freenet if it isn't accessed frequently. I would think that it won't be easy to get when the network grows enough.
And freenet doesn't get slashdotted at all.
One of it's features is that popular content becomes more widely available and unrequested content fades away. When thousands of slashdotters get on freenet and request a site, they'll also be distributing them to each other.
There's nothing morally wrong with heroin use -- if someone wants to fuck themself up, that's his right.
There isn't? Harming yourself may be considered unethical. Maybe you'll cause grief to someone that cares for you. What about Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative: "act only on that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.". This has nothing to do with file-sharing, though.
You can easily find ethical arguments against all the actions the flame tried to compare it to, but as the central free software argument goes, sharing is a good thing. Copyright law is just that. A law which was designed to help printing houses (*not* authors) as duplication was expensive. There never was a moral principle that supported it.
But, as you point out, the comparisons crumble even before this. Asking what the general public thinks about an issue is not the same as asking an extremist group about their cause.
I can see no reason for having the double-click anymore. What do you need selecting single files for today anyway? You could answer that it is needed for deleting files, accessing a file's properties dialog and information about them. Drag'n'drop covers covers moving and deleting and does not require a separate select-click phase to work.Properties are only accessed through right-clicking and are too, completely doable without the select-click.
One more reason for the confusion is that today, accessing files is done more and more through the browser, everyday computer usage in general is heavily web-based and nothing, including opening files inside other programs, in the browser requires a double-click. The browser is even the same application as the one you use to operate with files in many cases. Also, while you mention single-click icons that Microsoft has introduced (where exactly?), also letting users have quicklaunch icons in the task bar (as done in Windows since Win98, GNOME, KDE, OS X) may have contributed to this.
I've only started to really like GNOME after 2.x where they made it simple and elegant. There used to be millions of little options in the control center, WM, everything, just like there still is in KDE. The usability test have really improved GNOME a lot.
Customizability is only a good thing up to a certain point. You can't really be easy to use *and* ultra-customizable at the same time. I have a lot of respect for KDE (and the file picker dialog really is better because of offering easy shortcuts to desktop, floppy, CD etc. even if a little busy... I bet GNOME will adopt those).
So, you basically have to make some sort of a compromise between intuitive, ultra-customizable and efficient to use. GNOME has just decided to have the ease of use as the top priority and I applaud them for that. Fortunately, we can all choose between GNOME, KDE or something else (I'm currently using ion which could fall to the concentrate on efficiency above all category)
We're of course wildly off-topic here, but how much is there to discuss about just OpenDarwin..?
there is some reasoning behind having just a single mouse button. To us computer literate who've gotten used to being able to right click it may seem very limiting but I believe the original reason (and why Apple still has only one mouse button) was that having a second one that is only of limited use is confusing to new users. I can verify this, having teached senior citizens to use a computer. "What's the second mouse button for?" is a frequent question to which I cannot really give an answer because it has none whatsoever at their level of usage. Another problem is that sometimes they tend to click it accidentally. I'm not saying having a second mouse button is a bad idea (I can't since I use it and the wheel daily) but there are reasons to not have it on a beginner's mouse.
BTW, nother thing that is difficult for senior citizens sometimes is getting double-clicks right and understanding why one has to doubleclick the icons while just a single click is enough everywhere else. What's the reason we have those again? Even KDE seems to have finally decided against defaulting to single-click icons in 3.1 at least on my Mandrake 9.1 beta. A shame, really.
Finally, while I've been forced to teach Windows so far, I feel that GNOME 2 would be a lot easier for beginners. There are all kinds of strange features in the Windows desktop. With GNOME I would not have to teach about My Computer and devices that it contains and there is just one logical place to save the user's files into: ~. In addition, there's all sorts of weird behaviour on the Windows desktop that has no real reason to exist (why does the start menu have to hide part of the contents of a folder if it's a little longer?). GNOME is definitely easier to use. My only wish would be is that GNOME would default to having the user's home directory as the desktop and make it function correctly in every case. Someone wrote an essay about it and I can easily see the beauty. In a way, the GUI's "home" is the desktop so why can't the two be the same?
I don't think being smart and getting good grades in school are really mutually inclusive. The way the school system works, you can get good grades just by working hard and having a good memory for example, you don't really need to be all that smart. OTOH, smart people don't have to be all that interested in studying or even necessarily good at it. I personally partially lost interest at some point in senior high (the equivalent of it here) and junior high wasn't challenging or interesting at all.
I agree that we shouldn't be so self-centered as to think we are the smart ones and be so quick to classify people as intelligent and dumb. I should know as to a certain degree I used to think that way back in high school but while not everyone who is "smart" is bound to be a nerd and unpopular, I do think that Paul Graham's observations do have some value.
I was unpopular back in high school, a nerd (still am I guess, but definitely not the same kind of nerd). I can think of at least one reason for it.
I didn't really care about what I looked like. I had many interests and used to think it was not important. I just wore what I had and didn't go into shopping sprees to find cool clothes. Nerds usually have glasses too, I don't think it's because they've looked at the screen too much. They just don't look good and that is not good for popularity. Only later did I start to realize that I needed to dress well in order to gain more acceptance but it was too late then. Many nerds and other individuals concerned with everything else but how they look also do this in their adolescence too, of course. But as Graham points out, it isn't really a problem anymore. My father was one of those people, however, and my lack of interest possibly was partly due to him as well.
I've decided that I will try to dress my children better and educate them about it when they reach that part of their life. Probably not the most important thing on your checklist for raising children but something I'd like to get right for my offspring.:)
Tux Games sells Linux games exclusively and provides packages with Linux binaries even when the developers choose not to. (Medal of Honor: Allied Assault has been added as a preorder item already after the icculus.org announcement)
Loki Games' has ceased to exist but their site still lists their resellers here, I'm sure many of them still stock Loki's old games and probably titles from other publishers too.
this is really not about making the correct choices, but to let the people who actually pay for Mandrake development decide where the distribution will be going in the future.
I don't think there really are "correct choices" in selecting packages for a distribution anyway...
It hasn't been said that Mandrake would be stripped to just one CD, it's only the first beta that is.
They're mostly using this to see what packages shoul d be included on the first CD, what should be automatically installed etc. and to find out if they've missed something that many of the club members find useful. A high ranking on the votes will ensure quality packages and inclusion on the main distribution.
The final distribution will still probably be the standard 3 CDs I'd think...
Try listening to Lawrence Lessig's talk titled free_culture and it may suddenly not seem all that far-fetched.
All you people going on and on about how Stallman is an unrealistic madman should read Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallmans Crusade for Free Software by Sam Williams which happens to be available under the GNU FDL and you might understand him a little bit better. The book was initially supposed to be an ebook with all the regular protections in place (as described by Lessig's presentation). I found the epilogue particularly touching.
I can't honestly see any advantage in ebooks for libraries in their crippled form. Well, maybe storage space but that is about it. You get more restrictions on your access to the information, less durable way to store it and somewhat clumsy readers but no advantages over traditional books. You could offer so much more with this without DRM.
While most commercial distributions are turning partly-proprietary, Mandrake has always followed the all-GPL/FDL route. Of the commercial ones, only Red Hat and Mandrake remain as really free(dom) operating systems the way the GNU project intended. I don't think they're out of line asking for support when they provide you a free distribution. Look at it as a service (we all know where free software companies should be able to make their profit, right) - you pay for the development of the software. Mandrake is in distress because it's users are mostly desktop users that don't need any support services because they can get the help they need from other places.
The Club also provides services for Mandrake users, you do get something in return for your money. I don't know of any other place you can have discussions/get help/read news about Linux and Mandrake in particular in almost 20 different languages such as Esperanto (!), Japanese and Finnish. There is the RPM-voting system for packaging new versions of software the club members request, the discounts for various products (not only Mandrake's), and some other smaller things. It's also nice to have our very own MandrakeSoft employee answering questions, being generally helpful and continuously coming up with ways to improve the service. Thanks Deno!:)
Recently the members got to interview the new CEO, the article gave insight to what Mandrake could develop into if it survives. The answers are only available for club members currently but some interesting tidbits are that they're going to focus on providing even more services for the club members, making Ximian GNOME part of the distribution as suggested by a club member (which I think all distributions should do anyway, instead of coming up with tons of different looking GNOME desktops) and developing new software on demand.
I suggest you take a look at the MandrakeClub site and look at what it offers before putting this down as "Charity".
Sounds interesting but I'm not going to install the Crossover plugin just to see it. Is it possible to view this with Mplayer now that it has full support for QuickTime?
P2P Radio seems to be working really well and I'm sure it's the same for video too. The RIAA is going to have a few headaches over these too... first they had unstoppable file-sharing and now they'll have same for live video streams and radio.:)
Slashdot Mirror
buy a Mandrake boxed set and you'll get the Nvidia drivers on the commercial applications CD.
Eh, 2.4 has been out a long time too but the kernel isn't the only piece of software that can be buggy in a distribution. Saying that there are few bugs is based on trying the release candidates and staying up to date with cooker before the release. In 9.1 most things really work and they do it well. That cannot be said for all Mandrake releases in the past. 9.0 had some issues for example, the worst of them being that supermount was broken. Having used all the release candidates and the final from cooker I can say that 9.1 has less bugs than 9.0 or 8.1 for example. I'd say it seems to be of the same high quality that 8.2 was. Definitely the best Mandrake release I've used.
What they expect is to release some games for Linux people to play, no more. Their approach is very different to Loki's - they're not attempting to port every AAA title in existence to Linux, they look for quality titles that they can get for a price that will still let them profit even with the current (small) size of the Linux gaming community.
:)
They're not targeting the people who want to play every new game that exists on the face of the earth like Loki seems to have attempted. (ie. hardcore gamers)
And yes, I believe LGP is managed better. Michael Simms has an idea of the kind of demand there is and will be as he also runs tuxgames.com, *the* Linux game reseller. He also watched Loki do it's mistakes in the past and I have no doubt that he doesn't plan on repeating them.
By the way, they already contacted the publishers of Tribes 3 here. They promised to get in touch about it.
There's an interesting transcript of an IRC interview with Michael Simms that I've been suprised to not see on Slashdot here. Apparently they're going to assign one of their developers to improve some GPL titles up to commercial quality. Very interesting stuff.
No.
This is about developing a commercial Linux title from scratch, having it as the main (but not necessarily the only) release platform.
It's a Linux Game Publishing sponsored attempt to form a new Linux-centric game development company. Something that hasn't been done before. LGP already does what you're talking about. Their latest port is Cyberlore's Majesty has just gone gold and there's a demo available. Looks very promising.
don't you think that the molested person may not be entirely happy if the photo material that documents their abuse is widely available and every child abuser is watching it? Also, downloading the image on freenet will distribute it even more. With that said, there was a discussion when freenet rc1 came out on kuro5hin. Someone there pointed out that while on freenet it is guaranteed to be impossible to censor child porn, you will never be able to remove it entirely from the internet either, because in many cases the content is in countries that don't care anyway. So the internet is just as bad. Maybe even worse, since child porn will gradually fade away on freenet if it isn't accessed frequently. I would think that it won't be easy to get when the network grows enough.
the thing about freenet is that it is an unreliable storage unless there is constant demand.
Only popular content will prevail and that means it isn't very suitable for archiving data.
And freenet doesn't get slashdotted at all. One of it's features is that popular content becomes more widely available and unrequested content fades away. When thousands of slashdotters get on freenet and request a site, they'll also be distributing them to each other.
There's nothing morally wrong with heroin use -- if someone wants to fuck themself up, that's his right.
There isn't? Harming yourself may be considered unethical. Maybe you'll cause grief to someone that cares for you. What about Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative: "act only on that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.". This has nothing to do with file-sharing, though.
You can easily find ethical arguments against all the actions the flame tried to compare it to, but as the central free software argument goes, sharing is a good thing. Copyright law is just that. A law which was designed to help printing houses (*not* authors) as duplication was expensive. There never was a moral principle that supported it.
But, as you point out, the comparisons crumble even before this. Asking what the general public thinks about an issue is not the same as asking an extremist group about their cause.
I can see no reason for having the double-click anymore. What do you need selecting single files for today anyway? You could answer that it is needed for deleting files, accessing a file's properties dialog and information about them. Drag'n'drop covers covers moving and deleting and does not require a separate select-click phase to work.Properties are only accessed through right-clicking and are too, completely doable without the select-click.
One more reason for the confusion is that today, accessing files is done more and more through the browser, everyday computer usage in general is heavily web-based and nothing, including opening files inside other programs, in the browser requires a double-click. The browser is even the same application as the one you use to operate with files in many cases. Also, while you mention single-click icons that Microsoft has introduced (where exactly?), also letting users have quicklaunch icons in the task bar (as done in Windows since Win98, GNOME, KDE, OS X) may have contributed to this.
Yes!
I've only started to really like GNOME after 2.x where they made it simple and elegant. There used to be millions of little options in the control center, WM, everything, just like there still is in KDE. The usability test have really improved GNOME a lot.
Customizability is only a good thing up to a certain point. You can't really be easy to use *and* ultra-customizable at the same time. I have a lot of respect for KDE (and the file picker dialog really is better because of offering easy shortcuts to desktop, floppy, CD etc. even if a little busy... I bet GNOME will adopt those).
So, you basically have to make some sort of a compromise between intuitive, ultra-customizable and efficient to use. GNOME has just decided to have the ease of use as the top priority and I applaud them for that. Fortunately, we can all choose between GNOME, KDE or something else (I'm currently using ion which could fall to the concentrate on efficiency above all category)
We're of course wildly off-topic here, but how much is there to discuss about just OpenDarwin..?
there is some reasoning behind having just a single mouse button. To us computer literate who've gotten used to being able to right click it may seem very limiting but I believe the original reason (and why Apple still has only one mouse button) was that having a second one that is only of limited use is confusing to new users. I can verify this, having teached senior citizens to use a computer. "What's the second mouse button for?" is a frequent question to which I cannot really give an answer because it has none whatsoever at their level of usage. Another problem is that sometimes they tend to click it accidentally. I'm not saying having a second mouse button is a bad idea (I can't since I use it and the wheel daily) but there are reasons to not have it on a beginner's mouse.
BTW, nother thing that is difficult for senior citizens sometimes is getting double-clicks right and understanding why one has to doubleclick the icons while just a single click is enough everywhere else. What's the reason we have those again? Even KDE seems to have finally decided against defaulting to single-click icons in 3.1 at least on my Mandrake 9.1 beta. A shame, really.
Finally, while I've been forced to teach Windows so far, I feel that GNOME 2 would be a lot easier for beginners. There are all kinds of strange features in the Windows desktop. With GNOME I would not have to teach about My Computer and devices that it contains and there is just one logical place to save the user's files into: ~. In addition, there's all sorts of weird behaviour on the Windows desktop that has no real reason to exist (why does the start menu have to hide part of the contents of a folder if it's a little longer?). GNOME is definitely easier to use. My only wish would be is that GNOME would default to having the user's home directory as the desktop and make it function correctly in every case. Someone wrote an essay about it and I can easily see the beauty. In a way, the GUI's "home" is the desktop so why can't the two be the same?
I don't think being smart and getting good grades in school are really mutually inclusive. The way the school system works, you can get good grades just by working hard and having a good memory for example, you don't really need to be all that smart. OTOH, smart people don't have to be all that interested in studying or even necessarily good at it. I personally partially lost interest at some point in senior high (the equivalent of it here) and junior high wasn't challenging or interesting at all.
:)
I agree that we shouldn't be so self-centered as to think we are the smart ones and be so quick to classify people as intelligent and dumb. I should know as to a certain degree I used to think that way back in high school but while not everyone who is "smart" is bound to be a nerd and unpopular, I do think that Paul Graham's observations do have some value.
I was unpopular back in high school, a nerd (still am I guess, but definitely not the same kind of nerd). I can think of at least one reason for it.
I didn't really care about what I looked like. I had many interests and used to think it was not important. I just wore what I had and didn't go into shopping sprees to find cool clothes. Nerds usually have glasses too, I don't think it's because they've looked at the screen too much. They just don't look good and that is not good for popularity. Only later did I start to realize that I needed to dress well in order to gain more acceptance but it was too late then. Many nerds and other individuals concerned with everything else but how they look also do this in their adolescence too, of course. But as Graham points out, it isn't really a problem anymore. My father was one of those people, however, and my lack of interest possibly was partly due to him as well.
I've decided that I will try to dress my children better and educate them about it when they reach that part of their life. Probably not the most important thing on your checklist for raising children but something I'd like to get right for my offspring.
Tux Games sells Linux games exclusively and provides packages with Linux binaries even when the developers choose not to. (Medal of Honor: Allied Assault has been added as a preorder item already after the icculus.org announcement)
Loki Games' has ceased to exist but their site still lists their resellers here, I'm sure many of them still stock Loki's old games and probably titles from other publishers too.
Linux Game Publishing lists their resellers here.
this is really not about making the correct choices, but to let the people who actually pay for Mandrake development decide where the distribution will be going in the future. I don't think there really are "correct choices" in selecting packages for a distribution anyway...
It hasn't been said that Mandrake would be stripped to just one CD, it's only the first beta that is.
They're mostly using this to see what packages shoul d be included on the first CD, what should be automatically installed etc. and to find out if they've missed something that many of the club members find useful. A high ranking on the votes will ensure quality packages and inclusion on the main distribution.
The final distribution will still probably be the standard 3 CDs I'd think...
Try listening to Lawrence Lessig's talk titled free_culture and it may suddenly not seem all that far-fetched.
All you people going on and on about how Stallman is an unrealistic madman should read Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallmans Crusade for Free Software by Sam Williams which happens to be available under the GNU FDL and you might understand him a little bit better. The book was initially supposed to be an ebook with all the regular protections in place (as described by Lessig's presentation). I found the epilogue particularly touching.
I can't honestly see any advantage in ebooks for libraries in their crippled form. Well, maybe storage space but that is about it. You get more restrictions on your access to the information, less durable way to store it and somewhat clumsy readers but no advantages over traditional books. You could offer so much more with this without DRM.
While most commercial distributions are turning partly-proprietary, Mandrake has always followed the all-GPL/FDL route. Of the commercial ones, only Red Hat and Mandrake remain as really free(dom) operating systems the way the GNU project intended. I don't think they're out of line asking for support when they provide you a free distribution. Look at it as a service (we all know where free software companies should be able to make their profit, right) - you pay for the development of the software. Mandrake is in distress because it's users are mostly desktop users that don't need any support services because they can get the help they need from other places.
:)
The Club also provides services for Mandrake users, you do get something in return for your money. I don't know of any other place you can have discussions/get help/read news about Linux and Mandrake in particular in almost 20 different languages such as Esperanto (!), Japanese and Finnish. There is the RPM-voting system for packaging new versions of software the club members request, the discounts for various products (not only Mandrake's), and some other smaller things. It's also nice to have our very own MandrakeSoft employee answering questions, being generally helpful and continuously coming up with ways to improve the service. Thanks Deno!
Recently the members got to interview the new CEO, the article gave insight to what Mandrake could develop into if it survives. The answers are only available for club members currently but some interesting tidbits are that they're going to focus on providing even more services for the club members, making Ximian GNOME part of the distribution as suggested by a club member (which I think all distributions should do anyway, instead of coming up with tons of different looking GNOME desktops) and developing new software on demand.
I suggest you take a look at the MandrakeClub site and look at what it offers before putting this down as "Charity".
signed,
A happy MandrakeClub member
before someone corrects. MPAA, obviously :P
Sounds interesting but I'm not going to install the Crossover plugin just to see it. Is it possible to view this with Mplayer now that it has full support for QuickTime?
:)
P2P Radio seems to be working really well and I'm sure it's the same for video too. The RIAA is going to have a few headaches over these too... first they had unstoppable file-sharing and now they'll have same for live video streams and radio.