Plane Shit

As you lusers may have noticed, I have not updated this blog in nearly a year. This is because I got a new computer, and I cannot imagine being stupid enough to put Linux on it. This leaves me with fuck-all to talk about. However, a few weeks ago some luser who still thinks it's 1985 tried to get me to use vi by telling me that it is "pretty much mandatory when you get out into the real world" (*snort*) and it's "available on all systems" (with the small exception of 90% of them). What century are these lusers living in?

Anyway, I am here to talk about Planeshift, a flossy MMORPG that has been "in development" as long as World of Warcraft and is still in beta. That is what happens when a bunch of basement-dwelling lusers think they can actually do something important. When I tried it five years ago, half the character models weren't there, characters walked about six inches off the ground, and the whole game was just boring and stupid. However, that was five years ago; let's see how they have improved.





Wow! You guys have actually de-evolved! You have managed to keep the same crappy features and add-in a bunch more! I particularly love the pop-up menus that provide me no obvious way to get them out of my face. If you watch the second video, you will notice they preserved the air-walking effect, and you thought the Moonwalk was impressive!



Can't see it and don't believe me? Here's a screenshot.



By the way, the videos are silent not because I used shitty freetard screencasting software but because THERE WAS NO FUCKING SOUND IN THE WHOLE GAME!!! Either some luser at Atomic Blue likes silent movies a whole lot, or some coder needs his head dunked in Eric Raymond's punch bowl. My god, Atomic Blue is almost as good as the GNOME and Evolution devs!

Furthermore, they now start me off in a closed-off tutorial land with nothing to do except (slowly) kill a bunch of rats. What fun! Compounding the fun is the fact that I COULD NOT TALK TO ANY NPCs! I honestly do not know how they managed to fuck it up this badly.

Wait a minute! It's because they're lusers!

Without Open Source, Free Software Is Just A Bunch Of Freetards!

Alright, I decided to cover one of the previous articles in more depth. In this truly stupid article, entitled Without Free Software, Open Source Would Lose its Meaning, Glyn Moody tries to make the case for a hard-line stance on 'Software Freedom.' Here are the lulzy results.

NOTE: The italicized text contain quotes from Richard Stallman.

The only reason we have a wholly free operating system is because of the movement that said we want an operating system that's wholly free, not 90 percent free.

Open source exists because of a refusal to compromise by the creators of free software programs. The “pragmatism” that Matt lauds is only an option for open source because the people who did all the hard work in creating free software refused to compromise initially.

Bullshit! The first GNU project was not an operating system kernel. It was a compiler! (Although one can make the case that it was a text editor.) Subsequent projects included shells and various Unix utilities, but they all ran atop proprietary (or BSD/MIT) operating systems. While the overcomplex HURD project was faltering, a truly 'free' operating system emerged from the Linux project, which was originally only free for noncommercial use! Talk about no compromises!

Ten years ago, Stallman pointed out the dangers of compromise:

If you don't have freedom as a principle, you can never see a reason not to make an exception. There are constantly going to be times for one reason or another there's some practical convenience in making an exception.

What, you mean like the exception you made to working on top of proprietary operating systems while developing your visionary vaporware microkernel?

Compromise is a slippery slope: once you start down it, there are no obvious places to stop. This plays right into Microsoft's hands: its current strategy is to dilute the meaning of “open source” - classic “embrace, extend, extinguish” - until it becomes just another marketing buzzword, applied routinely, and ultimately with no real value.

So what? You may ask. If, as Matt writes, the whole point is “to go mainstream”, then such blurring of the line separating free software from non-free software is surely a small price to pay to achieve that wider use of open source. It might seem so in the short term, but I don't believe it's a wise strategy in the long term, even from a purely pragmatic viewpoint.

Ahh, the classic slippery slope fallacy rears its ugly head again! The obvious place to stop is when the community decides the perceived drawbacks to further cooperation outweigh the perceived benefits.

Moreover, if the term “open source” becomes devalued, coders and users will become disillusioned, and start to desert it. The former will find the sharing increasingly asymmetric, as their contributions are taken with little given in return

If the coders do not see the value of contributing to a specific project, then they will either find a new project or take the existing code (one of the fundamental definitions of open source is the right to fork) and start a new project. This is what happens right now!

(something that may well happen even to open source companies using the GNU GPL if they demand that contributors cede their copyright, as most currently do).

This problem already happens, and it is dealt with. Even the GNU project insists on copyright, and even they have changed the terms on licenses occasionally. I do remember that there were a lot of complaints about GPLv3.

But, of course, the point is not “to go mainstream”: as Stallman said, it's about having “freedom as a principle.”

If the point is not to go mainstream, then how do you think freedom will be spread?

And because this is how he fights for freedom, without compromise, he is prepared to do and say things that people in the pragmatic world of open source find regrettable – shocking, even. That's partly because it inconveniently makes their job of “going mainstream” harder, and partly because of a genuine distaste for some of Stallman's actions. But what they overlook is that freedom fighters – for that is how Stallman regards himself – have always been so focussed on their larger goals that mundane matters like convenience and good manners tend to fall by the wayside.

Wow! Even Linux Journal admits that RMS is a terrorist!

Ultimately, the reason that free software cannot compromise is because we compromise over any freedom at our peril: there is no such thing as 50% free.

There is also no such thing as 100% free (at least not in the realm of "Free" Software). Even "Free" Software places limits on what someone is free to do with it.

As history teaches us, freedom is not won by “going mainstream”, but by small numbers of stubborn and often annoying monomaniacs that refuse to compromise until they get what they want. The wonderful thing is that we can all share the freedoms they win, whether or not we helped win them, and whether or not we can live up to their high standards of rigour.

The monomaniacs may lead the way to freedom, but they always do so with the masses right behind them. Yes, even the hardline groups have to make SOME compromises. If Free Software evangelists cannot win over the masses, then Free Software is doomed to shrivel-up just as hundreds of other ideologies have done.

Hey! You don't have to take my advice. You go right ahead with your Free Software Foco Theory. I will just sit back and laugh all the way to the release party for Windows 8.

Rants and Laughs 12

Since I am lazy, I will provide you with a lazy update.

• If you are a luser, then the last usage example on the chown Wikipedia page will send you into fits according to Linux Reddit.
  

  $ chown -R us base

  
  Isn't that a riot?


• Apparently some freetard feminists are angry about Shuttleworth commenting on the fact that Lunix is hard to explain to women. Freetards and Feminists! These sound like my kind of people!


• Mat Asay, in his article Free Software Is Dead. Long Live Open Source! drops a bomb on the freetards by saying that open source needs to survive. Of course, the freetards tear him a new one for that.


• A Reddit luser asks where lusers go to buy music. Uh, Mr. Freetard, lusers don't buy music. That is what P2P is for. Haven't you ever heard that "information wants to be free?"


• Another luser asks the community about Linux compatible laptops. Dude, just buy a Macbook!


• Well, Ubuntu Karmic Koala is almost here, and it is shaping up to be a pretty uninspiring release. Here are ten notable things about the new Ubuntu, and none of them mention the title that sounds almost as funny as Masturbating Monkey.


• Here is another LJN article. It asks if Microsoft still has an open-source strategy. Sure it does! Microsoft's open source strategy is to find out how it can make money given or despite open source. That is its strategy.


• The wingnuts at Boycott Novell are at it again! Apparently, Richard Stallman has been the recipient of some well-founded shit-flinging recently, and BN has had it up to here with that guff! The attacks mostly seem to revolve around rms's screed a few months ago about Mono and Tomboy. Jeez! Get a life, people!

Well, that is all for now. I have a few more indepth comments in the pipes, so check back soon!

Taking Out The Trash Operating System

It is finally time to talk about one of the most hated design decisions (among many worthy candidates) of the Unix (and friends) operating system: irrevocable file deletion. You see, when you delete a file using, say, the rm command, it decides to simply delete all references to the file from the filesystem and mark the space as free. This means that, as far as Unix is concerned, the file is gone forever!

Modern operating systems, such as Tenex, have included a 'garbage can', so when you 'delete' a file, it goes into the garbage can, so if you accidentally deleted a file you need, you can go in there and get it back. Files are only permanently deleted if the user explicitly 'empties' the garbage can or the system needs more memory (at least this is how it works on Windows).

In a (mostly futile) attempt to be more user friendly, the GNOME and KDE devs looked at the trashcans every OTHER operating system used and decided to come up with their own half-assed implementation. Eventually, in an amazing display of cooperation, they even decided to standardize on the same directory, and people say Linux devs can't cooperate! Of course, since this functionality is not built-in to the operating system but is instead a matchsticks-and-glue implementation that rides on the Desktop environment, it has some problems.

First, it only works with programs that explicitly support it. Programs like rm or any GUI tool that is just a wrapper over shell tools (i.e. most of them) will still delete the files as usual. So, sometimes you can retrieve your important file, and sometimes you can't.

Second, since the trashcan is just a regular directory, it can quickly fill up, and if the user does not manually empty it regularly, the hard drive fills up as well. Just like an extremely lazy person, Linux doesn't take out the trash even if the whole house is filled with shit!

While writing my last article, I came upon an error when I quit Avidemux; it read something like "Unable to create Avidemux log. Filesystem is full." Leaving aside the fact that it was creating a log while it was exiting, this was worrisome. Well, I had been copying a lot of stuff onto the hard drive a few days ago, but I had deleted most of it. I then decided to open my garbage can and empty the trash. Lo and behold, 3 GBs of space opened up instantly!

Well, class, what have we learned today? First, not having a two-step deletion process can cause tens of millions of dollars of damage. Second, not integrating the trashcan leaves the user unsure if he can recover his files if he accidentally deletes them. Third, not monitoring the pseudo-trashcan means one can run out of space very quickly.

Class dismissed!

Lights! Camera! No Action!

I am sorry about the lack of posts. Linux just has not interested me in a while. Anyway, today we will take a wonderful look at the world of video editing under Linux. Now, Linux's suckiness when it comes to video-editing is well known, but I am not talking about professional video editing. Today, I am going to look at how Linux handles a very basic feature.

Here's the deal. I have a bunch of porn videos. I want to trim out the crap to leave only the good stuff. The usual way to do this is to split the video into a bunch of clips and then assemble the good clips into a movie. This is easy with Movie Maker, and it is slightly less easy with iMovie. Now let's try it on Linux...

NOTE: I am using Ubuntu 8.04 x86-64 LTS for this comparison, since it is the Linux system I have installed. All the packages come from the Ubuntu repositories. I tried to use every video editor I could find in the Add/Remove section.

The main contenders are the following.

1. Avidemux


2. Kino


3. Kdenlive


4. Open Movie Editor


5. Pitivi Video Editor

Let's see how each stacks up.

NOTE: If you want to follow along, you can find the video I am using here. For those with the IQs of lusers, the site is definitely NSFW! The link is down.

FURTHER NOTE: GIMP, being the wonderful program that it is, decided it needed some screen time in some of my images. I am too lazy to redo them, so you will just have to cope. Ah, the wonders of Open Source!

EVEN FURTHER NOTE: Anyone who complains about the movie being WMV can feel free to go back to linusporn.com and pretend the rest of the world uses Ogg Theora.

Avidemux

Alright, let's fire it up!



Okay, this looks decent enough. Let's click "Open" and select "Chrissy.wmv".



Well, this one actually works! Sorta....

Now, since it plays the video properly, it should be able to copy it properly too. Let's just select a portion of the video with the A & B icons. It is actually quite user-friendly. Let's just leave the Video and Audio options as "Copy". It should now create a new WMV file (I named mine chrissy2.wmv). Now, let's open it!



Well, it looks great, but there is no sound! Well, I don't really want to fuck around with audio options, so let's continue on.

Kino

Kino looks like it is a great, simple video editor .... for camcorders!! However, since we are desperate, we might as well try it.



Let's click "File->Open" shall we?



Well that's no good! Still, we might as well try to import it. Who knows? It might work!



Since PAL is for Eurofags, I will choose NTSC. You choose whatever you like.



Oh gosh! It failed! Who woulda thunk?!

Kdenlive

There is no way in hell I am bringing down all the KDE dependencies for a stupid video editor!

Open Movie Editor

As usual, let's fire it up.


You figure it out!

Alright, drag the Chrissy.wmv onto the Video and Audio tracks. Select a clip. Then click on Project->Render.



Choose to render it as a Quicktime file (the only option, of course). Then click Encode. After several minutes it should give you this.



If you are not following along, you can simulate the image by rocking your head back and forth really fast. It seems to have recorded two frames and looped them for several seconds. At least, the audio is working!

Pitivi Video Editor


Last but (barely) not least, we come to the Pitivi Video Editor. Let's fire it up!



Cool! We can just drag Chrissy.wmv onto the Clips window! Drag & Drop is so awesome .... for 1995!



Well, it seems to support the file, but now what? Apparently, the Pitivi developers care very much about the GNOME Interface Guidelines, and they have been reading up on how to write a GNOME application. Pitivi is so simple (READ: stupid) that it can only supports merging clips into one video and not splitting a video into clips! This would have been useful for the second phase of the operation, but it is useless without the first!

Conclusion

Let's summarize. Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distribution among 'ordinary' (i.e. not super-freetarded) users, features several video editors, none of which can make an acceptable movie clip! I am not trying to splice special effects into my Hollywood film reel here! I am just trying to cut out the boring parts of pornos! All I really needed was an editor suitable for editing home movies, and Linux cannot even provide that!

What else is new?

Rants and Laughs 11

It is time once again for another humorous look at the freetard ecosystem.

• Some Zemlin guy has proclaimed this the Week of the Linux Desktop. Let's look at his claims indepth, shall we?
  

  Smartbook or Netbook; Common Denominator is Linux

  Apparently, these 'smartbooks' (i.e. a cross between a netbook and a smartphone) use Linux a lot. Remember all of the Linux-based netbooks two years ago? Remember how they all run Windows XP now?
  

  Instant on runs on Linux

  Yeah, I have already covered this.
  

  Better Audio and Video Support

  Dude, Real has supported Linux for years now. Big deal.
  

  Palm “Pre” makes a spash with a Linux based Smartphone

  Dude, I thought Palm was dead. This sounds like another Hail Mary Desperation Pass.
  

  Intel Buys Wind River

  How is this relevant? Wind Rive is not a desktop manufacturer! Plus, their product line included BSD/OS and vxWorks!
  In short, Dell has released a Linux laptop. Hooray!


• Apparently, some people find SELinux extremely complicated. But it makes things so secure!


• Here is a nice tutorial on how to understand a feature of Unix that infected plenty of other operating systems: symbolic links. Of course, Chapters 8 and 13 of the Unix Haters Handbook also cover this material.


• Here is some really good Linux Hate.


• It has been nine months since Chrome was released on Windows, and the open source 'community' has still not succeeded in releasing an acceptable version for Linux. This is just disgraceful guys. Doesn't the CATB propaganda say that, once you release the source-code, then legions of flosstards will descend on your codebase and port it to Linux? WTF?!


• Here is something that involves yours truly. I asked ESR's opinion of a comment I found on Linux Hater's blog; his response mostly evaded the question. What do you think of the matter?

So, that is all for now. I will try to write another indepth article on some freetardery soon.

New Blog

Well, here is my new blog! Feel free to make yourselves at home.

P.S. Is there a good way to move all the comments from the old blog to the new?