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posted by martyb on Wednesday June 01 2016, @02:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the unintended-consequences dept.

Devuan, the once devil-may-care total fork of Debian, once linked to virulent internet sexism and gamer-gate affiliated image forums by Debian Developer Russel Coker, has mulled the option of enacting a Code of Conduct when one of its female members was insulted:

> https://botbot.me/freenode/devuan/2016-05-25/?page=2
>jaromil today i was scrolling through http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_...
>golinux Well, I tried but couldn't find anybody. Then nextime popped up
>jaromil jeez. we need to take precautions. and also I get the point from Sarah Mei we need a code of conduct on-line and later for on-site http://www.sarahmei.com/blog/2015/02/01/the-fos...
> its never too early for that
>
>golinux One can only control one's own actions. ;)
>
>jaromil ah the wise one
...
>Wizzup he is doxed?
>jaromil that's him. we have a dossier yes

Devuan has been criticized for taking a "who gives a damn" and "real admins do it all by hand themselves every install" attitude towards security hardening scripts, and despise in particular any mention of the "bastille" linux hardening script (originally funded by Mandrake Linux).

Interestingly when Devuan was forming, the people behind Devuan cited the very person they are considering making the code of conduct against:

> http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20141027
>VUA: It will be a governing body that puts the benefits of the users first, not the mystification of a "doacracy" delivering all the power to the package maintainers.
>Originally, Debian was created as a universal operating system for the users. The Free Software movement itself is there to defend users' rights. Sgryphon explains it well in this thread. ( http://www.debianuserforums.org/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=3031 )
>We will likely reproduce the governing body of Debian to follow its original mandate, with the advantage of starting small and more focused, hopefully with less pressure from the interest of commercial developers.


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  • (Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday June 01 2016, @09:09PM

    by Marand (1081) on Wednesday June 01 2016, @09:09PM (#353662) Journal

    now, the problem isn't that he has an unpopular opinion, it's that he treats women like trash everywhere he posts.

    Nah, he also treats everyone who disagrees or calls him out on his bullshit like trash, as well. He's posted submissions here before, trying to pretend he's a third party, and always outs himself when criticism of the agenda he's pushing appears. This submission lookslike more of the same.

    He's just a mentally unstable jackass all around, finds a target and tries to start shit. He does tend to target women, maybe thinks they're easy targets or has a beef with them in his deranged mind, but doesn't restrict himself to harassing them. He's tried starting shit with me (ond others here) but I've been online long enough that I just don't care, he can't piss me off.

    He needs mental help and will never get it so all that's left is to remove him anywhere he appears. The only COC you need is "ban MikeeUSA on sight"

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday June 01 2016, @09:33PM

    by Marand (1081) on Wednesday June 01 2016, @09:33PM (#353672) Journal

    The only COC you need is "ban MikeeUSA on sight"

    I decided I should elaborate since it's probably not clear: I'm saying that the correct stance for a community in general is not to tolerate repeat offender jackasses that can't be civil to others. Downmod, /ignore, ban, etc. rather than let the trolls derail everything. Everyone has bad days, or says somethhing shitty without intending it, and that's fine. The problem people are the ones like Mikee that never do anything else. You eventually lose the benefit of the doubt.

    It doesn't matter what his opinions are, or anyone else's, the problem is that he can't seem to avoid bringing them into every discussion, no matter how irrelevant they are to the topic, and he always fails the civility test. Most people, when they get told they're being a dick, will either drop it or go "oh, sorry" and move on. But never him, he just keeps doing it while trying to get others involved by misrepesenting the issue to others, cherry-picking what gets pasted, etc.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @02:12AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @02:12AM (#353767)

      >ones like Mikee that never do anything else.

      MikeeUSA is a foss dev.

      • (Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday June 02 2016, @03:00AM

        by Marand (1081) on Thursday June 02 2016, @03:00AM (#353782) Journal

        Whether he's a dev or not is irrelevant to what I said, and you know it. You cherry-picked a small fragment rather than taking it in context:

        Everyone has bad days, or says somethhing shitty without intending it, and that's fine. The problem people are the ones like Mikee that never do anything else.

        That is clearly stating that the problem is when someone never seems to interact with a community in a positive, civil way. If it's a one-off thing, like if they get into a heated discussion and take it too far, you can usually tell someone to just knock it off, stop being a jackass, and that's enough. Sometimes it isn't and you have to add some force to it, like a temporary ban, or taking away voice in an IRC channel, and that will usually get the point across.

        Then you have the repeat offenders that do this everywhere, and never stop, no matter how many warnings they get, no matter how many times they get kicked, de-voiced, banned, etc. They're just not going to get along with others, and at that point they either have to get told to STFU and just work quietly, or GTFO.

        Mikee is very clearly in the latter camp; this shit has been going on for what, over a decade now? He's a a serial troll, with obvious mental issues and a complete inability to be involved in a community without eventually turning it into a new round of insane, agenda-pushing douchebaggery. Eventually you have to just give up on some people, they're never going to learn to be civil.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @04:36AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @04:36AM (#353828)

          >That is clearly stating that the problem is when someone never seems to interact with a community in a positive, civil way.

          The "community" never interacts in a productive way: it just "discusses" and demands.
          Why should devs be civil to that?

          The old opensource way to handle the "community" was the correct one.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @05:01AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @05:01AM (#353843)

          >this shit has been going on for what, over a decade now?
          15 years.

    • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday June 02 2016, @04:19AM

      by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday June 02 2016, @04:19AM (#353818) Journal

      Why not just let him say his stupid shit and then point out what a fuckwit he is and then kick him if he doesn't STFU? To quote Mark Twain: "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

      The problem with things like CoC is we have seen where that leads, it leads to censorship and discrimination. Whether we like it or not we have to accept the fact that a large portion of our youth is well and truly spoiled to the point they believe its their right to NEVER see anything that doesn't fit within their myopic worldview, else you are "triggering" them or "not providing a safe space" and they will push for more and more restrictions. Ironically the ones they remind me most of is the Moral Majority of the 1980s, take that and mix it with a heavy dose of cultural Marxism and there ya go.

      And as another pointed out nothing these spoiled rotten oversized children like to do more than to sue, its considered a form of virtue signaling and lets them throw the victim card on the table which is their favorite card to play.

      Just remember folks it NEVER stops, first will be Mikee douchenozzle, next will be "ban him he's a misogynist", followed by "ban that one, they are transphobic", then "oh and those, they don't support BLM so they HAVE to be racists" and it goes on and on and on.

      --
      ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @04:40AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 02 2016, @04:40AM (#353831)

        >first will be Mikee douchenozzle, next will be "ban him he's a misogynist"

        These usually happen at the same time.
        "Ban his code, he is sexist" -2009

      • (Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday June 02 2016, @05:19AM

        by Marand (1081) on Thursday June 02 2016, @05:19AM (#353850) Journal

        Why not just let him say his stupid shit and then point out what a fuckwit he is and then kick him if he doesn't STFU? To quote Mark Twain: "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”

        That's basically what I meant with the other comments. I don't think there's generally a need to set up rules disallowing people from saying stupid shit, because that just leads to "zero tolerance" type policies that get enforced by tinpot dictators, the real-life equivalent of rules lawyers in D&D games. Usually, if someone's being an idiot, calling it out and telling them to STFU is good enough. If it's not, a temporary ban (or equivalent) with a warning to stop being a dick gets the point across. You only have to resort to permanent removal if the person is just a serial offender that either can't get along or can't seem to understand basic concepts like "This is only for technical discussion, keep personal shit out of it" (for mailing lists or channels that have that focus)

        I used to spend a lot of time on various IRC networks back when IRC was generally more popular and its use more widespread, and there were usually two types of channels: ones that had very clear, very strict lists of rules with a zero-tolerance enforcement policy; and channels where enforcement was looser, and more along the lines of "try to not be a jerk". The latter were usually nicer places to be, and bickering was handled by telling both parties to take it to private message and stop spamming the channel with the bullshit.

        That's also the approach I took with enforcing civility, because usually it was all that was needed. IRC has ignore and private chats, so it's not like you must make your fighting as public as possible. If the op tells you to stfu you can keep it up in /msg if you want, and the other party can /ignore you if they don't want to see it. The flip side of this was that, no, I would not referee someone's petty private bickering; what happened outside of the channel wasn't the channel's problem.

        Maintaining order can be done without restricting someone's ability to occasionally say something stupid. You just have to have people willing to say "hey, that's enough, chill out" and enforce it if things get out of hand. Long-term bans were rarely needed, just for a handful of people whose only goal was to pick fights all day long.

        Just remember folks it NEVER stops, first will be Mikee douchenozzle, next will be "ban him he's a misogynist", followed by "ban that one, they are transphobic", then "oh and those, they don't support BLM so they HAVE to be racists" and it goes on and on and on.

        Yep, that's how it's always been. Following from above, those channels I mentioned that had strict sets of rules and policies for retribution were usually run by the same kind of people that want codes of conduct and use them like a bludgeon to force everybody into line. They were terrible places to hang out, because you always had people trying to wield the rules as a weapon to get people banned. Too many rules just means too many ways to stir up shit when you don't like someone.

        I don't think everyone that likes COCs and rule lists are like that, though. There's definitely a group of people that just have this misguided idea that, if they list a bunch of bad things they don't like, then people won't do them. This subset just doesn't realise that a code of conduct is worthless.

        The reason? Most people don't need one, because "don't be a jerk" is usually sufficient for people. If you tell someone they're being a jerk they usually back off, or maybe try to explain what they meant. If they follow up by continuing to be a jerk, a slap on the wrist (temporary ban, remove voice, etc.) will get the point across, and usually things are fine.

        The other people, though, the ones that can't be dealt with civilly? A COC isn't going to help there, because they're still going to be jerks, with or without it. If you tell those people to stop, they'll just double down on it. Sometimes it's a game, sometimes they're just mental, but the end result is the same: they're just being trolls or fighters and will never quit no matter how many rules you throw up on a webpage they'll never read. For this group, writing up a COC is like giving them a TO-DO list of ways to piss people off.

        • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday June 02 2016, @09:56AM

          by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday June 02 2016, @09:56AM (#353954) Journal

          Exactly, you don't need a CoC to tell someone not to be a douchenozzle, nor does it take a CoC to spot when someone is trolling like this guy obviously is and tell him to STFU or they'll muzzle him. But if you start writing all these "don't do this, and that as well" frankly they never stop because the oversized 5 year olds that think its their Marx given right to NEVER be offended or see anything that doesn't gel with their beliefs simply will not let it.

          We are SUPPOSED to be thinking intelligent adults, yes? So why would we let our spaces be dictated by shrinking violets that literally lose their shit over merely seeing rude posts by some nutbar? I mean there are some posters here I think are total whack-a-doodles and everything they post is the most inane PC police propaganda bullshit this side of Tumblr, but would I ever censor them? HELL NO, I'll happily let them parrot their mindless completely illogical talking points and point out they are drooling morons and go on, because I'm an adult and know one of the most valuable and precious things we have is free speech and that is completely destroyed if that speech is only allowed to be completely inoffensive.

          But this is why we have to be VERY careful, and fight crap like CoCs at every turn, because we have too many spoiled as fuck professional victims out there that think you and I should not have the right to speak unless we are agreeing with them. To steal a quote I believe I saw on this very website...

          Activists will go out and build ramps for disabled people.
          Social justice warriors will go out and remove stairs for everyone so that the disabled person won't be offended.

          --
          ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
          • (Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday June 02 2016, @10:52AM

            by Marand (1081) on Thursday June 02 2016, @10:52AM (#353979) Journal

            I mean there are some posters here I think are total whack-a-doodles and everything they post is the most inane PC police propaganda bullshit this side of Tumblr, but would I ever censor them? HELL NO, I'll happily let them parrot their mindless completely illogical talking points and point out they are drooling morons and go on, because I'm an adult and know one of the most valuable and precious things we have is free speech and that is completely destroyed if that speech is only allowed to be completely inoffensive.

            Slightly off topic, but if you (or anyone else that reads this) ever just get sick of seeing a specific poster's comments on here, or want to reduce the urge to argue with a certain person, you can get the next best thing to an ignore feature by setting them as "Foe" and then under the "Comments" section of your preferences page, give Foes a -6 Karma modifier. As long as your breakthrough threshold is 0 or above, it'll bury anybody marked Foe by default. You can still see the comments if you want, of course, but it can clean up the comment section a lot.

            I actually like it more than a proper ignore feature, since it doesn't completely block the comments, just makes them hidden by default. There are a couple people here who, though I don't have a problem with personally, I just find their writing annoying and prefer not to see everything they say. If it were a full block I wouldn't be willing to use it, since they still sometimes say useful things, so it works out much better than a proper block for me :D

            • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday June 04 2016, @02:32AM

              by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday June 04 2016, @02:32AM (#354985) Journal

              But to me that is self censoring and I honestly do not care for it,if you like it fine, but I figure I'm a big boy and can ignore the dipshits and the ones that have guzzled too much of the white liberal guilt koolaid.

              Besides if you never see the whack-a-doodles, how are you ever gonna provide a counterpoint of sanity? Its like when I pissed off the neo-nazis in Dallas in the 80s, everyone was booing them or just ignoring them but not me...I went around the corner, bought some craft paper and made up my own little sign that read "Ask me about the camps" and told anyone who asked about my grandfather who was a CMS in charge of communications in the USAAF and was there when they liberated one of the camps. He told of bodies stacked like cordwood, traincars filled with corpses, not being able to tell male from female because they were so starved, and even having to tell his men NOT to give food to them because they had been starved for so long that the really rich chow the soldiers got would throw their bodies into shock, they instead had to make a weak soup to keep from overloading their weakened systems.

              Needless to say the nazis didn't like it so much and when the cops stood between them and me and said "its a free country, he has a right to speak too" they packed up and left. Booing didn't make them leave, ignoring didn't make them go away, but providing some truth to counteract their lies? As Louis Brandeis said " Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants". So don't ignore them, call them out on their lies, nothing the whack-a-doodles hate more than a big old fistload of truth.

              --
              ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
              • (Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday June 04 2016, @07:31AM

                by Marand (1081) on Saturday June 04 2016, @07:31AM (#355039) Journal

                But to me that is self censoring and I honestly do not care for it,if you like it fine, but I figure I'm a big boy and can ignore the dipshits and the ones that have guzzled too much of the white liberal guilt koolaid.

                Well, the only ones I've done it for are aristarchus and Arik. The former because 90% of what he writes is incoherent babble, and the latter because I got tired of seeing the monospace font comments and his arguments about why everyone else is wrong about how they look. It doesn't hide the top-level comments, and if it looks like they may have said anything relevant I can always expand their replies to others. I don't have anything against either person, and if it were a case of choosing an all-or-nothing block, I wouldn't do it because sometimes they say things worth reading. If they actually bothered me, I'd spend more time arguing with them, but they don't. I just like that extra bit of control over the presentation of their comments; with aristarchus it's just a time-saver, and with Arik it's a pet peeve about the text styling rather than any issue with the comments themselves.

                It's definitely not a trick I use often... I've only got the two there, and I can count on one hand how many people I've put on ignore on IRC over the past 20 years I've been using it, with fingers still left over. I'm especially reluctant to block someone completely, because I'd rather see what's said and choose whether I want to see it. Which is why I like the -6 karma thing here, it's just "hide by default, choose when I want to see it" much like how you and others here tend to browse over the AC threshold. Hell, I don't even do that; I view at -1 with breakthrough 0 so that I get all the comments, but have to manually expand the -1s. I do it because I want to fix bad moderation, but I decided early on I didn't want to have the -1s start out expanded because of the APK-style super-long-post spam and the like.

                Also, your story's interesting, and I fully agree with that sort of approach. Giving people the attention (the booing and such) is usually what they want, and ignoring it can be justified as silent agreement, but doing something different that derails it can be effective and satisfying. I don't have any stand-out stories that come to mind, but I like the approach and do similar things where I can, when I can.

                In a similar vein, I'm always ready to call out something I think is bullshit for what it is, especially online, because if nobody stands up and provides a contrary argument, then others later might take it for silent agreement and get the wrong idea. It's not about proving someone is wrong, though; it's about putting the rebuttal out there so others reading can make their own decisions based on the original comment and the response. It's practically impossible to change someone's views by arguing with them, so it's never for their benefit that I do it. Plus sometimes the other person wants that argument, and I'm not interested in playing that game. Say what I have to say and leave it at that.

                What's nice is when I see something I want to reply to, but find that someone else already said more or less what I wanted to say. Saves me the time of writing and proofreading, because ultimately I'd rather be lazy than waste the time just to see myself talk. :)

                • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday June 05 2016, @02:12AM

                  by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday June 05 2016, @02:12AM (#355367) Journal

                  aristarchus? Oh yeah the one that thinks all white people should be executed and worships black penises...yeah he's a real whack job, that is why I love posting FBI stats when he starts his whack-a-doodle white guilt narrative, I can imagine that little vein in his head just a throbbing at being faced with reality...Sigh its the little things that make you all warm and fuzzy, yay know ;-)

                  As for the other one...is he the horrible font guy? I automatically skip his shit, if he insists on making all his posts look like ass I will just bypass them.

                  --
                  ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
                  • (Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday June 05 2016, @06:11AM

                    by Marand (1081) on Sunday June 05 2016, @06:11AM (#355416) Journal

                    I can't figure out what aristarchus is trying to say, usually, so I have no idea what his opinions are on anything. It always seems to just be off-topic gibberish that is often indistinguishable from the robo-posts one sometimes finds in blog comments, accompanied by a spam link. I could replace any of his comments with spam and the result would likely be more coherent and relevant. lol.

                    And yeah, Arik is the one that posts all his comments in the monospace code font. Tried asking him nicely to stop and just got some condescending bullshit lecture about how his posts look perfectly fine and the problem is I'm too stupid to know how to set my fonts correctly. You know, ignoring the fact that I'd have to set the browser's "monospace" font to something that isn't monospace to fix his dumb shit, which would cause problems with everything else on the web that uses it.

                    For a while I just skipped his posts like you, but then I decided to make it easier by having them auto-collapsed.

                    • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday June 05 2016, @11:10PM

                      by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday June 05 2016, @11:10PM (#355629) Journal

                      He's an SJW, they hate white people and worship black penises. I really wouldn't be surprised to find out he spends his weekends as a sissy slave, dressed in a maid outfit offering his nasty booty to any bum who is the right shade of brown. Its scary how high up in tech some of the sissy slaves can get, you heard about the one who wrote all the SJW shit dialog and ruined Borderlands the Pre-Sequel, right? A vid got released showing him in a little pink dress while some big nasty looking black guy banged his wife...I don't even want to mention what happened afterwards, seriously gross. And THAT was the guy heading a major game development team? SJWs, huh?

                      As for monospace guy...what he he doing, posting from Lynx? I just instantly ignore anything he posts because it looks like shit, all I can figure is he is some FOSSie that refuses to use anything not GNU and hence why it looks like shit, as he is probably using some GNUSense with horribly outdated text only browser.

                      --
                      ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
                      • (Score: 2) by Marand on Monday June 06 2016, @01:36AM

                        by Marand (1081) on Monday June 06 2016, @01:36AM (#355662) Journal

                        you heard about the one who wrote all the SJW shit dialog and ruined Borderlands the Pre-Sequel, right? A vid got released showing him in a little pink dress while some big nasty looking black guy banged his wife...I don't even want to mention what happened afterwards, seriously gross. And THAT was the guy heading a major game development team? SJWs, huh?

                        That was Anthony Burch. The funny (and sad) thing is that he was just some dumb shit "comedian" doing a series with his sister on some site, Destructiod I think, prior to Borderlands 2. Apparently someone thought he'd be a great fit for BL2 onward and he got put on writing duties. Which, to be fair to the guy, some of the writing was tolerable. Problem is it's the same old 90/10 problem: 90% of his writing was total garbage. He took a surreal, fucked up setting and turned everybody into reddit-esque, meme-spewing, LOL SO RANDOM XD garbage. And of course gave the character his sister voiced (Tiny Tina) way more relevance and dialogue than she deserved, to the point of even giving her own DLC. Nepotism is awesome, folks.

                        Luckily the gameplay was hands down better than BL1 in practically every way possible, because that's the only thing that made it tolerable. Though, like I said above, the writing did still have a few good parts here and there. I actually liked most of those backstory snippets you found of various playable characters via ECHO logs, for example. The problem was mostly all the side-characters and "SO RANDOM LOL MEME" type dialogue that felt like a poor attempt at imitating BL1's style and failing. Plus Tiny Tina was goddamn annoying to me, but apparently most people liked her so I'm in the minority there I guess. I did, however, like Handsome Jack in it, but that's almost entirely because his voice actor completely nailed it.

                        As for pre-sequel, I didn't even touch it. None of the playable characters looked fun to me and I heard the writing was even shittier than BL2, plus the oxygen mechanic seemed to be generally hated, so I just stayed away. The good news is I think they got rid of Burch after that, so maybe there's hope for a Borderlands 3, assuming Pre-Sequel didn't completely kill the franchise off.

                        Random side thought: know what I miss? SHODAN fom System Shock 1 and 2. We've had imitators of the antagonist narrative style over the years -- like Jack, GladOS, etc. -- but nobody has outdone SHODAN's writing and VA so far, IMO. The others tend to be amusing, often quotable, but SHODAN was genuinely, uniquely creepy and memorable. Not an antagonist narrative, but Jon St. John's voicework in Duke Nukem 3D deserves honourable mention, too. Same with the guy that voiced Garrett in the Thief series. They were both memorable and set the moods for their games in much the same way.

                        As for monospace guy...what he he doing, posting from Lynx? I just instantly ignore anything he posts because it looks like shit, all I can figure is he is some FOSSie that refuses to use anything not GNU and hence why it looks like shit, as he is probably using some GNUSense with horribly outdated text only browser.

                        I don't think so, actually. The impression I got from the discussion about it is that he believes (or pretends to) that monospace font is the One True Way to view text, so he set all his fonts to monospace and thus sees no difference in the code tags vs normal writing. And expects everyone else to either do the same or set all fonts to variable width. Any mention of it inevitably ends in him being an insulting dick about it, claiming you're just too stupid to change your fonts and use the internet "as intended". At this point, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that it's all an attention-grabbing tactic and he only does it to be contrary, rather than out of an actual conviction that it's better.

                        It sure as fuck isn't anything FOSS-related, though, because it's just as obnoxious to me sitting here in Debian viewing the comments in Firefox, Chromium, or anything else. I even use elinks at times, but you don't see me forcing all my comments to be monospace. It's just not necessary most of the time, and frankly, I like being able to actually use some markup for emphasis.

                        At some point I just stopped giving a shit about this stuff. I've been using Linux just as long as I have Windows, and prior to that grew up with shit that booted to a CLI of some type (BASIC interpreter or CP/M mostly). I can live happily on the command line and I'm equally comfortable with a traditional window manager or a keyboard-heavy tiling WM. But in the end I just don't care what other people use. I'm a live-and-let-live kind of guy about tech stuff, so I don't give a fuck if someone else likes or dislikes Linux, BSD, Windows, OS X, etc. as long as they give me the same respect about my preferences. It works for you, cool; everyone has different needs and wants. Likewise, I don't care about editor wars; I use both emacs and vi, among others, and just generally have a "use what works for you, dude" outlook on it all. I do, however, like a good discussion about any of it, at least until it devolves into "you're wrong because you like the wrong thing" shit-slinging.

                        So, if he really just prefers monospace fonts for browsing, that's fine. The problem for me is the conscious decision to try forcing it onto everybody else by writing every comment in the "code" style, which wraps everything in <tt> tags, and then being condescending to anybody that questions it or considers it misuse of the tag.

                        Oh, there is one exception to the "I just don't care" -- BeOS. I was actually upset about its failure. It was so far ahead of everything else at the time, with a super-slick GUI that nobody caught up to for years and great multitasking at a time when everything else was a kludge at best. Their failure was as much due to shady tactics by the competition as anything else and that was a goddamn shame. It sort-of lives on as Haiku, so at least there's that.

                        • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday June 06 2016, @04:34AM

                          by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday June 06 2016, @04:34AM (#355730) Journal

                          The sad part is the parts Burch DIDN'T write in BL 2? were really really good, nobody even gave a single shit about one of the main characters being gay because they didn't beat people about the face with it he was just like "oh he's my ex, that is why he's pissed" and nobody cared. With the PS? ZOMFG it was ALL SJW SHIT all the way down. One character within 30 second of you meeting her announces she is gay and THEN she makes you pick up these audio logs that are NOTHING but "Did you know I'm gay? I'm so very very gay you know. yep love the munching of the carpet I do" just on and on AND ON AND ON and of course he had to turn Mr Torque into a giant sissy (probably wish fulfillment, thinking that is what he should look like as that black guy banged his wife) that does nothing but act like a total cuckold.

                          BTW you are soooo lucky you missed that game as you will NOT believe what they did...get ready now, i shit you not...THEY REMOVED THE LOOT! I swear I had to play it a second time just because I could not believe that in a LOOT HOARDING GAME they would have NO loot but...yep, no loot in the game. Every.single.chest and enemy drop is NOTHING but crap guns, not once in 2 playthroughs did I find a single usable gun, not once. Like how they ruined Bioshock Infinite with forcing that damned skyhook mechanic they completely gutted Borderlands so they could...get this...stick ALL the loot into...vending machines. Yep no point in exploring, no point in killing bigger baddies for better drops, no the "game" was reload your save over and over next to a vending machine until the RNG put a decent gun in the thing...Needless to say I uninstalled that shit but quick, and am damned glad his cuckold behind got fired. I didn't know his sis was Tiny Tina though...that really explains a LOT of what I didn't like about BL 2. Oh and sadly there are no plans for a BL 3, looks like Burch killed it dead. damned shame as like Bioshock I & II Borderlands I & II always have a place on my HDD, and every Halloween I have to go to Dr Ned's Zombie island, Its just a perfect holiday treat.

                          As for monospace guy...why does that not surprise me? Reminds me of "he who shall not be named" who would spam every networking article with endless rants about using Hosts files, they get hung up on one little thing and the next thing ya know? They are just acting batshit. Well if he wants his posts to be unreadble I'll be happy not to read it, win/win in my book.

                          and totally agree about SHODAN, but it really scares me they'll try to "reboot" the series and we'll end up with another thief 4...eeek! But I think today the damned game devs think they are soooo fucking hip they can't do shit without pop culture references and winks to the audience which would just destroy any attempt at building a bad guy as pure badass as SHODAN, it would end up hipster fourth wall breaking shit...yuck.

                          --
                          ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
                          • (Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday June 08 2016, @01:35AM

                            by Marand (1081) on Wednesday June 08 2016, @01:35AM (#356688) Journal

                            The sad part is the parts Burch DIDN'T write in BL 2? were really really good, nobody even gave a single shit about one of the main characters being gay because they didn't beat people about the face with it he was just like "oh he's my ex, that is why he's pissed" and nobody cared.

                            Heh. Funny thing is, I can't even think of which character you mean. I vaguely recall a few characters being bisexual or gay, but it generally didn't hit me over the head with it so I just went "oh, okay" and gave it no thought. Which I guess makes your point for you. I don't care if you want to make a character male, female, trans, gay, bi, or whatever, as long as it's not ham-fisted, tacked-on bullshit.

                            The problem, for me, is when it stops being a character trait and instead becomes the entire point of the character. Of course, it's not just characters that have this problem: a lot of people seem to define themselves solely by labels like that. That guy that has to tell you he's vegan or remind you how much of a hipster he is at every chance, or the Arch Linux user that mentions it in any conversation, etc. They stop being people and turn into parodies of people. Unfortunately, it also gets mistaken for good character design, and instead of getting a character with a personality, you get a character with a series of labels.

                            Especially if the creator has an agenda. For example, that Netflix series, Sense8. It follows eight different main characters, and they were mostly pretty good, but one of the characters is this male-to-female transsexual lesbian super-hacker mary sue that gets way too much focus early on, to the point it's comical. To its credit, this is only really a problem in the first few episodes, and ends up being a good show, but I almost didn't keep watching because of the agenda-pushing narrative. During those first few episodes, when it's introducing the viewer to the characters, it sets up character arcs for each of them, and the super-hacker character's initial storyline was about family problems and a mother that refuses to accept the character's gender-change, plus how the character's ostracised from the LBGT community, etc.

                            The content didn't bother me, and the storyline had potential, but the problem for me was that, of these 8 characters, many of them were in life-or-death situations or just had generally more compelling narratives, but no, the mary-sue author-insert got the bulk of the screen time because of a desire to turn the character into an agenda. You see, the show was (is; a second season is coming) a collaboration work between J. Michael Straczynski and the Wachowskis (of Matrix fame). One of said Wachowskis is trans, and that entire character's art just came across like a blunt "LIFE IS HARD FOR US" agenda narrative. Luckily it only lasted a few episodes, and settled into something more reasonable. There were still random bits of "my paaaaaain" type ham-fisted shit, but by the end of the series the character actually had some personality that wasn't just "I'm a lesbian transsexual! Look at me kiss my girlfriend!" like the start was.

                            Now, don't take this as a dislike for the show. I actually liked most of the main characters and their arcs were generally interesting. In fact, that was half the problem, because it seemed like the more interesting stories took a backseat to one of the creators' agendas for a while. Funny enough, they actually had a good example of having a gay character that has more personality than "I am gay" in the same show, and his storyline was one of the more interesting ones as a result.

                            BTW you are soooo lucky you missed that game as you will NOT believe what they did...get ready now, i shit you not...THEY REMOVED THE LOOT! I swear I had to play it a second time just because I could not believe that in a LOOT HOARDING GAME they would have NO loot but...yep, no loot in the game. Every.single.chest and enemy drop is NOTHING but crap guns, not once in 2 playthroughs did I find a single usable gun, not once. Like how they ruined Bioshock Infinite with forcing that damned skyhook mechanic they completely gutted Borderlands so they could...get this...stick ALL the loot into...vending machines. Yep no point in exploring, no point in killing bigger baddies for better drops, no the "game" was reload your save over and over next to a vending machine until the RNG put a decent gun in the thing

                            I sort of get the point of that, since those Seraph vendors in BL2 helped a lot with fixing some of the RNG problems of never finding good weapons. However, it was just a way to augment finding legendary loot, not a complete replacement. You still had boss-only drops and rares dropping legendary loot, so there was always a reason to reset and play through again. Especially with that DLC that added Overpower levels. I got that recently and fucking love it.

                            I don't really play BL1 anymore, though. I ended up liking the character balance in 2 a lot more and it just makes it hard to go back. Probably doesn't help that I played it so damn much in the first place and burned out a little on it. lol.

                            and totally agree about SHODAN, but it really scares me they'll try to "reboot" the series and we'll end up with another thief 4...eeek! But I think today the damned game devs think they are soooo fucking hip they can't do shit without pop culture references and winks to the audience which would just destroy any attempt at building a bad guy as pure badass as SHODAN, it would end up hipster fourth wall breaking shit...yuck.

                            I wonder how likely a System Shock sequel even is at this point. Bioshock came about because SS wasn't commercially successful despite being adored, so that ship's probably sailed. Plus there tends to be copyright issues where the publisher has copyright on the IP so the devs can't do anything with it. That sort of thing usually does a good job of blocking real sequels.

                            Honestly, I wouldn't mind a System Shock 3, though, even now. The problem is that it would likely a reboot like you said. Everything has to be a fucking reboot now, can't just build on what's already there, no. Movies, games, doesn't matter, every few years you just reboot it and use the name again for something completely fucking different. Fuck.

                            I give Deus Ex: Human Revolution a pass, though. It's sort of a soft reboot, because it got made as a prequel and now they just seem to be following the prequel without explicitly wiping out the original game. I can only imagine the backlash if anybody involved had been stupid enough to try writing out one of the best, most-loved PC games ever like it never happened. That would be like Nintendo deciding to completely write off every Zelda, Metroid, or Mario game in favour of a new, "cool" version.

                            Oh shit, speaking of, Capcom's actually trying that with Mega Man, giving the series a new backstory and character designs for an upcoming animated series (and likely games related to it). Fans have been in an uproar over it because it's hilariously bad [capcom-unity.com]. I don't think even the EXE games got as much backlash...

                            • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday June 09 2016, @02:00AM

                              by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday June 09 2016, @02:00AM (#357121) Journal

                              It was Hammerlock. There is one side quest where you have to get this box from a super large...skrags? Whatever those large bat wing looking things were, and Hammerlock asks you to get the pages of his book back while you are getting the box. He simply has a throw away line like "Yeah my ex stole it, it was a bad breakup" or something like that, nobody cared because it wasn't bitchslapping you with it like in PS. The PS feels like a game written by Reddit, its ALL SJW "did you know I'm a" (insert gay/trans/whatever) just pounding you with it...and you are right its their ONLY character trait which makes them parodies.

                              And I never had a problem with any RNG in BL2, because there was always the bosses you could farm for loot. I never understood everyone getting hung up on legendary because I had several legendary weapons (I ended up giving away a ton and still have lockers full of them) because you would often find a blue or purple weapon that was frankly better in every way. You slap the Morningstar sniper rifle in the hands of...aww crap, the guy with Bloodwing...and ooohhh mama, by the fifth round you could be popping for a million damage!

                              But I don't think they did it to fix RNG, I think they did it because of "gravity gun syndrome" where the devs fell in love with a mechanic and broke the game to push it like HL 2 did with the gravity gun or Infinite did with the skyhook, in the case of PS? Its the fucking grinder. If you didn't hear they had a grinder in the game, feed it 3 weapons and you would get one random of the next higher tier, 3 whites equal a green, three green a purple, etc. Problem was you ONLY ever found shit white guns in game, so either you spent all your time hoping a vending machine would pop up a legendary or you spent ALL THE DAMNED TIME being a glorified pack mule just dragging endless mounds of shit guns back and forth to the grinder. Between that and the SJW shit it completely ruined the game, so badly that I didn't even bother playing the DLC, I just tossed it.

                              As for BL1? I still play it for the DLC, I love General Knox "Oh look our glorious leader sent me a dragon made out of macaroni" and Zombie Island, just a blast to play, though not as polished as BL2. And I'd love a new SS, even if they went the Deus Ex route, but you just know they'd go reboot, and it'd be full of hipster fourth wall breaking and pop culture crap. I swear its like devs today just can't see how badly pop culture crap dates movies and so just keep sticking memes and Reddit crap into their games. Its not surprising though, did you see how EA fought against Battlefield I because they thoughts kids would be too dumb to know there was a WWI and would be expecting the same kinda shit they got in MW...sigh.

                              And it doesn't surprise me about Capcom, only Konami is worse at screwing up a franchise than Capcom, just look at how they keep trying to turn Resident Evil into a fricking action game, or the way they keep slowing down and bloating Street Fighter with one button specials and crap...yuck.

                              --
                              ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
                          • (Score: 2) by Marand on Thursday June 09 2016, @12:02AM

                            by Marand (1081) on Thursday June 09 2016, @12:02AM (#357077) Journal

                            Huh, apparently Night Dive Studios, the company that has been re-releasing the original System Shock and System Shock 2 in places like GOG and Steam -- and ported SS2 to Linux with a wine wrapper -- is actually doing a remaster version of the first System Shock. They recently put up a video of pre-alpha gameplay footage [youtube.com].

                            The sound clip at end sounds like they're still using the Terri Brosius-voiced SHODAN audio, which is promising. I have no issue with a remaster of the games (especially the first) as long as it doesn't manage to completely mangle the atmosphere, and the voicework was a big part of it.