You're kind of an idiot if you think they'd end offline mode, which is hugely popular. Valve is the rare company that actually subscribes to the notion that the best way to make a profit is to put together an exceptional product and make people like them (I've ended up thrashing out bugs with senior Valve developers--sent an annoyed email to Gabe Newell asking what happened to their development quality for TF2, and was on the horn with three different Valve devs the next day to help track down a bug in their Radeon support).
I actually enjoy L4D single-player--it's pretty fun. Much more challenging and borderline unfair, but pretty fun. It serves to up the Badass Quotient, as you are forced to essentially be your entire team at once.
As for cheapskate thief friends--I have enough friends who bought it that I don't have to worry about the immoral asshats, and I'm part of an online group that has 30-50 regular players. Nothing to worry about there.
You do peg one of the few places where "use Linux!" actually works (technically-minded staff and a budget crunch), but you don't address a potential problem: you've introduced a mixed environment. Not inherently bad, but might be a serious pain in the ass for a small business.
what you have to worry about is google chrome or windows ie suddenly saying "with our latest browser, we are implementing ecmascript shiny plus plus (trademark, copyright), which will allow us to serve you compiled code, which will make your browsing experience more fantastical and delicious!"
then we have a serious sliver against free software
No you don't, you idiot. What other people choose to do with their own websites is none of your fucking business. If you want to download jQuery, go get it.
If you make a modification to the CSS, it means nothing. Drupal is GPL, which only requires distribution to users. You are the user, running the code to provide a service. You are under no obligation to provide any code changes anywhere. (The AGPL attempts to combat this...but the AGPL is among the more retarded open source licenses in its design.) Modifications to the JavaScript are automatically distributed when the user downloads the.js file, so why's that matter to you at all?
Why is it a legitimate point that some wanker wants to run only Holy GPL code? It's not his website. He can choose to run what he wants on his own website. If he doesn't want to run non-GPL code, he should probably stick to the FSF website, because he isn't going to find it many other places.
It is not his right to expect that others cater to his extremist views. Simple as that. He can do whatever he likes with what he owns, but if he wants to tell me what I must do to comply with his wishes he can fuck right off.
I don't mean to be particularly snarky here, but open source software mistreats its users too. Subject someone to The GIMP for a few hours (pun very much intended, thank you) and there's a case that you might be up for crimes against humanity just for that broken interface...
I think it's pretty clear, if you just keep the fundamental principles of free software in mind. If you use software, you should have the freedom to modify it and run a modified version.
Those principles are inherently non-free and wrong. If you write software, you should have the freedom to release it under whatever goddamn terms you want.
The AGPL is a horribly written license, even moreso than the GPL, and while in theory it does what he wants it's largely considered to be much less enforceable than the GPL.
Windows is uniformly slower and more un-reliable than Linux.
Citation fucking needed.
It is inherrently insecure, due to Active X.
And this is just fucking stupid. Modern IE releases don't allow ActiveX by default.
It is buggy, and you cant trust the M$ fixes, so support is a huge enterprise problem.
Buggy? Really? And Linux isn't? Have you not looked at the entire fucking Linux software stack above the kernel and GNU system, peppered with WorksForMe(tm), incompatibilities, and flaws?
Everything's buggy. Linux's lower layers tend to be more solid and robust (unless you need worthwhile sound support), while Windows's upper layers tend to be more polished, practiced, and workable. And the idea that you can't trust the "M$" (are you twelve fucking years old, you juvenile idiot?) fixes is laughable.
The lock-in applications are mostly un-auditable Excel/Word macros and crap proprietary VB code, which should have been banned under Sarbanes-Oxley already.This must STOP, All busnisses are responsible for their conduct even if it is the consequence of crock closed source code. When CEO' fear to go to jail the closed EULAs will stop and proper financial oversight will insist that, at least in major financial applications, all code and applications are to be auditable. The same rule must apply to any computer aided voting machinery.
This is equally retarded (aside from the voting machinery bit, which is reasonable and prudent). You have no right to see the process of a privately held corporation, only that the results are correct.
I'm not a big fan of the standard DS; I didn't buy one because it didn't particularly interest me at the time, and still doesn't (I dislike the two-screens gimmick, and it wasn't significantly more powerful than a GBA for what I was using it for with my homebrew). The better hardware and easier entry into publishing via a Nintendo App Store intrigue me about the DSi.
Uh...I knew how to program pretty much cold when I went in. I started when I was very young, though, so it's a little more natural to me than some folks.
Whatever language you choose, you'd better be good at it. Your mentors will help you with project requirements, etc. if you get selected (and you should be hanging out in their IRC chats, talking with them, figuring out what they want to do, and getting your name in their minds), but they will expect you to be a solid programmer who doesn't need to be hand-held.
I don't really recommend any groups in particular. For example, the Drupal guys seem way nice (not a group I've worked for, but one I'll be applying to this year), but generally expect some solid community interaction beforehand. WinLibre is a group that's kind of really dysfunctional, with only one or two people involved--who also happen to be your mentors; that was the organization I had the worst time with. Nice guys, not the right kind of org for GSoC.
You're best off scattergunning a lot of quality applications to a lot of groups. My first year, I applied to 12, and got accepted for my favorite one. My second year, I applied to 3, and got accepted to two of them (one I knew was an acceptance, so that was foregone and I wasn't worried about getting too many apps in). This year, I don't have such a guaranteed project lying around, so I'll be going with as many quality applications as I can manage.
I participated twice so far, applying again this year just because I enjoy it.
My mentoring experience was very uneven. One mentor was very good, the other very crap. I completed my projects for both without a hitch, but the time without a good mentor was much more difficult.
It's a little bit of a crapshoot. You're more likely to get in if you target smaller groups, but you're more likely to get good support if you target larger groups. YMMV.
That's nice. When you break 1% of the desktop market I'm sure people will start to care. As it is, Chrome runs wonderfully on the OS that 90% of the world uses on their desktops. Enjoy your Slowfox.
More features - features that are a pain in the ass to use. You're not doing well here.
Easier to use - there are some features of the various DEs I like, but if you ever have to say "open a terminal" (and too often you still do), you do not get to talk about ease of use.
Better driver support - For older hardware, yes, this tends to be the case. For...say...graphics cards? Not so much. ("They won't open-source their drivers" is not an excuse. Users don't care how hard it is to make something work, they just expect it to work.) Plus, there's a lot of hardware that's just not addressed at all under Linux. Not always their fault, but that doesn't matter to a user.
Faster - Depends. Are you using GNOME or KDE? If so (especially the latter), I doubt it. If you're using XFCE or Fluxbox, yes, it'll be faster.
More stable - Preposterous. I can't remember the last time I saw a BSOD that wasn't related to misbehaving hardware (and those cause kernel panics too, so don't pretend your shit doesn't stink).
"Windows's only remaining advantages" - Ease of use for normal people. Far more applications. Far better applications (I'm sorry, I respect the effort put into the projects, but neither KOffice nor OpenOffice have gotten to the point where they effectively compete with Office 2003, and if you're one of the idiots who thinks the GIMP is a Photoshop replacement you should just stop breathing). Windows-designed hardware. Games.
Stop drinking the Kool-aid. Linux has its benefits, but it's still playing catch-up where it matters: in the user's hands.
I didn't know about the rotation modes being different; I don't yet own a DS and only do GBA homebrew. That could be tricky. The rest of what you outlined is in the "annoying but straightforward" category, aside from perhaps mucking with sprite priority.
Slashdot Mirror
You can copy and paste your entire Steam directory to any computer and it works just fine.
I have a copy of Steam and L4D on a flash drive and it works anywhere I plug it in.
Pretty sure you get an actual key for Bioshock and other third-party games that could be used with a retail disc. I know you do for UT3.
I think offline mode works for something like a month or so and can be extended, though I haven't used it for that long.
You're kind of an idiot if you think they'd end offline mode, which is hugely popular. Valve is the rare company that actually subscribes to the notion that the best way to make a profit is to put together an exceptional product and make people like them (I've ended up thrashing out bugs with senior Valve developers--sent an annoyed email to Gabe Newell asking what happened to their development quality for TF2, and was on the horn with three different Valve devs the next day to help track down a bug in their Radeon support).
I actually enjoy L4D single-player--it's pretty fun. Much more challenging and borderline unfair, but pretty fun. It serves to up the Badass Quotient, as you are forced to essentially be your entire team at once.
As for cheapskate thief friends--I have enough friends who bought it that I don't have to worry about the immoral asshats, and I'm part of an online group that has 30-50 regular players. Nothing to worry about there.
Even works on a flash drive, if you have a big enough one.
L4D load times dropped a ton when I threw it on an 8GB flash drive.
You do peg one of the few places where "use Linux!" actually works (technically-minded staff and a budget crunch), but you don't address a potential problem: you've introduced a mixed environment. Not inherently bad, but might be a serious pain in the ass for a small business.
The terms are perfectly clear. Unless you are provided directly with GPL-licensed code, it's not GPL.
What is difficult about this?
You can choose not to use the software if you don't like the terms. That is freedom.
He was a very important and positive figure. He's not anymore.
what you have to worry about is google chrome or windows ie suddenly saying "with our latest browser, we are implementing ecmascript shiny plus plus (trademark, copyright), which will allow us to serve you compiled code, which will make your browsing experience more fantastical and delicious!"
then we have a serious sliver against free software
No you don't, you idiot. What other people choose to do with their own websites is none of your fucking business. If you want to download jQuery, go get it.
If you make a modification to the CSS, it means nothing. Drupal is GPL, which only requires distribution to users. You are the user, running the code to provide a service. You are under no obligation to provide any code changes anywhere. (The AGPL attempts to combat this...but the AGPL is among the more retarded open source licenses in its design.) Modifications to the JavaScript are automatically distributed when the user downloads the .js file, so why's that matter to you at all?
Why is it a legitimate point that some wanker wants to run only Holy GPL code? It's not his website. He can choose to run what he wants on his own website. If he doesn't want to run non-GPL code, he should probably stick to the FSF website, because he isn't going to find it many other places.
It is not his right to expect that others cater to his extremist views. Simple as that. He can do whatever he likes with what he owns, but if he wants to tell me what I must do to comply with his wishes he can fuck right off.
Dunno if that's actually true, but I know he doesn't use active email. Dude batches up email and sends them once a day.
I'm not particularly interested in the rantings of somebody who doesn't understand how people actually use computers.
I don't mean to be particularly snarky here, but open source software mistreats its users too. Subject someone to The GIMP for a few hours (pun very much intended, thank you) and there's a case that you might be up for crimes against humanity just for that broken interface...
I think it's pretty clear, if you just keep the fundamental principles of free software in mind. If you use software, you should have the freedom to modify it and run a modified version.
Those principles are inherently non-free and wrong. If you write software, you should have the freedom to release it under whatever goddamn terms you want.
The AGPL is a horribly written license, even moreso than the GPL, and while in theory it does what he wants it's largely considered to be much less enforceable than the GPL.
Not quite. Caprica Six (the one who ended up boinking Tigh) and Baltar did. The illusory/virtual/"angel" Six/Baltar, not so much.
Windows is uniformly slower and more un-reliable than Linux.
Citation fucking needed.
It is inherrently insecure, due to Active X.
And this is just fucking stupid. Modern IE releases don't allow ActiveX by default.
It is buggy, and you cant trust the M$ fixes, so support is a huge enterprise problem.
Buggy? Really? And Linux isn't? Have you not looked at the entire fucking Linux software stack above the kernel and GNU system, peppered with WorksForMe(tm), incompatibilities, and flaws?
Everything's buggy. Linux's lower layers tend to be more solid and robust (unless you need worthwhile sound support), while Windows's upper layers tend to be more polished, practiced, and workable. And the idea that you can't trust the "M$" (are you twelve fucking years old, you juvenile idiot?) fixes is laughable.
The lock-in applications are mostly un-auditable Excel/Word macros and crap proprietary VB code, which should have been banned under Sarbanes-Oxley already.This must STOP, All busnisses are responsible for their conduct even if it is the consequence of crock closed source code. When CEO' fear to go to jail the closed EULAs will stop and proper financial oversight will insist that, at least in major financial applications, all code and applications are to be auditable. The same rule must apply to any computer aided voting machinery.
This is equally retarded (aside from the voting machinery bit, which is reasonable and prudent). You have no right to see the process of a privately held corporation, only that the results are correct.
I'm not a big fan of the standard DS; I didn't buy one because it didn't particularly interest me at the time, and still doesn't (I dislike the two-screens gimmick, and it wasn't significantly more powerful than a GBA for what I was using it for with my homebrew). The better hardware and easier entry into publishing via a Nintendo App Store intrigue me about the DSi.
Uh...I knew how to program pretty much cold when I went in. I started when I was very young, though, so it's a little more natural to me than some folks.
Whatever language you choose, you'd better be good at it. Your mentors will help you with project requirements, etc. if you get selected (and you should be hanging out in their IRC chats, talking with them, figuring out what they want to do, and getting your name in their minds), but they will expect you to be a solid programmer who doesn't need to be hand-held.
I don't really recommend any groups in particular. For example, the Drupal guys seem way nice (not a group I've worked for, but one I'll be applying to this year), but generally expect some solid community interaction beforehand. WinLibre is a group that's kind of really dysfunctional, with only one or two people involved--who also happen to be your mentors; that was the organization I had the worst time with. Nice guys, not the right kind of org for GSoC.
You're best off scattergunning a lot of quality applications to a lot of groups. My first year, I applied to 12, and got accepted for my favorite one. My second year, I applied to 3, and got accepted to two of them (one I knew was an acceptance, so that was foregone and I wasn't worried about getting too many apps in). This year, I don't have such a guaranteed project lying around, so I'll be going with as many quality applications as I can manage.
I participated twice so far, applying again this year just because I enjoy it.
My mentoring experience was very uneven. One mentor was very good, the other very crap. I completed my projects for both without a hitch, but the time without a good mentor was much more difficult.
It's a little bit of a crapshoot. You're more likely to get in if you target smaller groups, but you're more likely to get good support if you target larger groups. YMMV.
That's nice. When you break 1% of the desktop market I'm sure people will start to care. As it is, Chrome runs wonderfully on the OS that 90% of the world uses on their desktops. Enjoy your Slowfox.
More features - features that are a pain in the ass to use. You're not doing well here.
Easier to use - there are some features of the various DEs I like, but if you ever have to say "open a terminal" (and too often you still do), you do not get to talk about ease of use.
Better driver support - For older hardware, yes, this tends to be the case. For...say...graphics cards? Not so much. ("They won't open-source their drivers" is not an excuse. Users don't care how hard it is to make something work, they just expect it to work.) Plus, there's a lot of hardware that's just not addressed at all under Linux. Not always their fault, but that doesn't matter to a user.
Faster - Depends. Are you using GNOME or KDE? If so (especially the latter), I doubt it. If you're using XFCE or Fluxbox, yes, it'll be faster.
More stable - Preposterous. I can't remember the last time I saw a BSOD that wasn't related to misbehaving hardware (and those cause kernel panics too, so don't pretend your shit doesn't stink).
"Windows's only remaining advantages" - Ease of use for normal people. Far more applications. Far better applications (I'm sorry, I respect the effort put into the projects, but neither KOffice nor OpenOffice have gotten to the point where they effectively compete with Office 2003, and if you're one of the idiots who thinks the GIMP is a Photoshop replacement you should just stop breathing). Windows-designed hardware. Games.
Stop drinking the Kool-aid. Linux has its benefits, but it's still playing catch-up where it matters: in the user's hands.
Iron, at least, does this.
No, I haven't. I don't really have any reason to. I like Chrome considerably better. It just gets out of the way.
I didn't know about the rotation modes being different; I don't yet own a DS and only do GBA homebrew. That could be tricky. The rest of what you outlined is in the "annoying but straightforward" category, aside from perhaps mucking with sprite priority.