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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 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...

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

    by Hairyfeet (75) <bassbeast1968NO@SPAMgmail.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.