The Linux and gaming Sunday round-up paper

Quoting: SalvatosRe: Kickstarter: It’s always odd to me to see people clamouring for worker unions. Here those things are essentially a mafia and I’ve never heard anything but complaints from employees being forced to join unions and being strong-armed and bullied by them. They get rich off of protection money which they then use to lobby governments for their own purposes. It’s hard not to be sympathetic with KS’s stance coming from this background, although I imagine things are different in the US.

Unions tend to go bad like that when they are dominated by employers. How effective that is depends on the level and kinds of corruption tolerated in the particular society. In the US, historically unions have had a significant political impact making things better for workers (and profits smaller for those in charge). US elites have had some success co-opting union leaderships, but it's never quite secure or complete, so most of them feel much more comfortable eliminating unions wherever they can.
In Northern Europe, unions are far more important and effective than in the US, and nobody sane would doubt that they had a huge impact in helping the average person. But certainly in some countries, the fix is in and the unions can be awful. Really depends where you are.
But put it this way: Employers never have a problem with the kind of union you're describing. If you've got an employer who is anti-union, it is always because they fear a union might be useful to people.

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: NanobangGlad to hear Stallman is staying on since he neither did nor said anything wrong. In a saner world he'd win a defamation or slander lawsuit against Vice.

He said a lot wrong. And no, he would lose a defamation case against anyone who just printed literally what he said.

Anyhoo, GOL has a block feature. I have found it has improved my general experience a lot.

They really need to having kids read more stoic literature in class. It's pathetic how thin skinned people are these days and I think making it so easy to tune everyone out has contributed to that. Vice did lie about what RMS said in the email btw. And it seems RMS isn't stepping down after all. His site was vandalized by orbiters of certain corporate shills on Twitter.


Last edited by Desum on 30 September 2019 at 12:48 am UTC

Quoting: CyrilEven if you don't see a Steam logo, there is none Borderlands 2 boxed edition without Steam, it doesn't exist.
You can check for example on pcgamingwiki.com for that stuff.
There are exceptions, but "98%" of PC games need Steam since many years, unfortunately.

Perhaps the way I shop for games is a bit old fashion, but generally I don't research my games before buying them, it's almost always a spur of the moment thing where I see the box in the store, maybe I heard the game's title before elsewhere but otherwise know virtually nothing about the game, I look it over, then purchase it if I like what I see. Thinking about it, this is how I purchase most things in my life.
I've had a lot of luck with the used PC game market, I've bought maybe 30 boxed PC games from the mid to late 2000s and I've only been burned by Stream requirements twice, and one of those times was undeniably my fault. I'd go as far as saying that 95% of the time a used PC game being stocked on a shelf absolutely is safe to buy.
At least that's been my experience. Steam basically killed physical PC game releases so finding a used PC game old enough to have a physical release floating around while simultaneously new enough to require Steam is pretty difficult.

My last physical PC DVD purchase was a few years ago, and I picked up a new (unopened) copy of Fallout 4 for cheap. It does clearly state on the back of the DVD sleeve that the game requires Steam to play. Even though the box and contents are of no practical use (I activated the key now), it is still containing various documents and artwork, including a Vault-Tec wall poster, and the art on the sleeve (double-sided) is quite decent. Pretty happy that owing to Proton, I'm actually able to play it on Linux rather than any need to (ever) fire up Windows. Saying that, it is sitting in my backlog of literally thousands of games that I still haven't played.

Nowadays I make much more considered purchasing decisions than I used to. It is very rare for me to just buy something I see on the fly, without any research or planning. Buying Humble's Monthly Subscriptions with their hidden reveal content is the closest I get to unknown, spontaneous purchasing (and even then, I don't need to activate the key, I can gift it to someone else).


Last edited by g000h on 30 September 2019 at 7:00 am UTC

Quoting: DesumThey really need to having kids read more stoic literature in class.

Agreed, kids (and adults) should read more literature in general.

Quoting: DesumIt's pathetic how thin skinned people are these days and I think making it so easy to tune everyone out has contributed to that.

I don't think people are any more thin skinned now than they always were. And tuning people out is surely much harder now in the era of social networks than before. The problem is, most of what you read and hear are opinions and reactions to these opinions, whereas information and moderate analysis are drowned out by the noise. You gain more than you lose by filtering it and ignoring those who shout the loudest. Too bad we only tend to filter out loud voices we disagree with.

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: NanobangGlad to hear Stallman is staying on since he neither did nor said anything wrong. In a saner world he'd win a defamation or slander lawsuit against Vice.

He said a lot wrong.

Over the years, no doubt. On this occasion, such as?

QuoteAnd no, he would lose a defamation case against anyone who just printed literally what he said.

I can't recall all the text of the article; I don't believe that's quite what they did. But they're responsible for the headline, not just the article. The headline was certainly both inaccurate and defamatory--and headlines get read by a hell of a lot more people than the articles under them. (The article's author probably wasn't responsible for the headline, but Vice sure as hell was)

On the thread about this, I didn't see a single person getting upset at Stallman over what he actually said. To the contrary, pretty much everyone who was upset was basing their anger on what they assumed he must have said given the Vice headline and perhaps the tenor of the article. Nobody who went and read the emails seemed to be all that mad. This suggests to me that the Vice article was quite successfully defamatory.
(Some people may have been upset at what he actually said--I didn't see that, though; nobody was saying "He said this, which was a bad thing to say." rather it was all general and mistaken, along the lines of "He defended Epstein" (which he did not), or references to things he is rumoured to have said in the past, or explicitly based on the Vice headline)

Well there are lots of people that have been upset with what he actually have written over the years and this particular instance is simply the pin that broke the camels back. One "classic" example from Stallman is this:

QuoteI am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing.

From https://stallman.org/archives/2006-mar-jun.html#05%20June%202006%20%28Dutch%20paedophiles%20form%20political%20party%29

And there are lots more like that unfortunately. And I say this as a person that highly idolizes Stallman, the free software movement would not have been what it is without him. However due to his social shortcomings (him likely being on the autistic spectrum, and this I write as a parent to an autistic son) he is not really suited to be the front head of FSF and GNU regardless of his other merits.

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: DesumThey really need to having kids read more stoic literature in class.

Agreed, kids (and adults) should read more literature in general.

Quoting: DesumIt's pathetic how thin skinned people are these days and I think making it so easy to tune everyone out has contributed to that.

I don't think people are any more thin skinned now than they always were. And tuning people out is surely much harder now in the era of social networks than before. The problem is, most of what you read and hear are opinions and reactions to these opinions, whereas information and moderate analysis are drowned out by the noise. You gain more than you lose by filtering it and ignoring those who shout the loudest. Too bad we only tend to filter out loud voices we disagree with.

Actually there are people that argue that we might be thinner skinned today due to us now living in a safer world than what we used to.

Youtube video from Seth Andrews that covers this in more detail than what I can write Seth Andrews - Unholy Trinity Down Under: "The Good Old Days"

Quoting: BotonoskiSteam basically killed physical PC game releases so finding a used PC game old enough to have a physical release floating around while simultaneously new enough to require Steam is pretty difficult.

Depends where in the world you live, I guess. Here in Germany, physical releases were still relatively common until recently, and the majority of those require Steam. So likely anything sold past 2010 is tied to Steam.

I've got a few DRM free games on disc, such as Broken Age, Broken Sword V and Book of Unwritten Tales 2, all of which even include the native Linux version right on the DVD, but the few more recent physical releases (Pillars of Eternity II, Kingdom Come: Deliverance) are tied to Steam, unfortunately.

I've been on the fence about physical vs. DRM for a while, but right now I'd rather have my stuff DRM free on GOG than a box with nice feelies that requires Steam. How cool was Thimbleweed Park in that regard: big box, feelies and a GOG key! (That had been a U.S. import, though)

Quoting: kaimanDepends where in the world you live, I guess. Here in Germany, physical releases were still relatively common until recently, and the majority of those require Steam. So likely anything sold past 2010 is tied to Steam.

I've been on the fence about physical vs. DRM for a while, but right now I'd rather have my stuff DRM free on GOG than a box with nice feelies that requires Steam. How cool was Thimbleweed Park in that regard: big box, feelies and a GOG key! (That had been a U.S. import, though)

I heard that physical PC games were still pretty prominent in Germany before, pretty neat but obviously has its own issues.

You can sort of have the best of both worlds in some cases. On one occasion already I've knowingly bought a physical copy of a game for extremely cheap that I knew wouldn't work due to DRM, then filled the DVD case with burnt DVDs containing my GOG copy of the game. I mean, GOG gives you those DRM free copies for a reason, so you might as well take advantage of it. I wouldn't do this for most games, just ones that have good feelies like soundtracks and thick colored manuals.