> it feels better to choose to listen to a particular album rather than putting endless playlists on shuffle.
Isn't that something you can do with streaming services as well?
I understand that many people choose to go with playlists, but it's not like the choice of listening to full albums has been taken away (yet).
Sure, the implementation is lackluster, with gaps between tracks when there shouldn't be one (really annoying on ambient/atmospheric/drone tracks), but still better than nothing.
> Isn't that something you can do with streaming services as well?
There's a number of differences.
- While yes you can play albums, streamers have decided for us that giving us an album-oriented playlist is out of the question. Try it: make a playlist of 12 favorite albums, maybe with some double albums in there -- now quickly, play the Miles Davis album in the middle. Compare this to leaving 12 albums in the front of your drawer because it's what you're into now: no way to recreate this on streamers, and even if there was, they could change their mind and take that feature away anytime.
- As for picking something out of the blue, browsing a 120-album collection is easy IRL, a modest collection. On a screen it's annoying at best. It's like trying to page through a book on kindle, IRL books are vastly superior because of the combination of visual and sensory/touch.
- Finally there's the commitment of having to fire up the medium and the pleasure of considering the jacket art etc. With streaming there is no "dropping a needle" pleasure, no resistance to abandon the stream once that one not-amazing song comes up, and the album art experience is garbage.
Streaming is good for discovery of single songs, and a good radio experience (but only if there's a human behind the playlist, or the AI isn't total garbage which it usually is). It's also unbeatable for quickly assembling a party-length playlist. But for an enjoyable, artist-focused listening session, it's kind of crap.
> the open-source community gets to make use of it as they please
Uhm... I wouldn't be so sure. Looks to me like such a license carries transitively to projects that depend on your software.
Suppose you're distributing a library on such terms. Then an open source project uses your library. Such a project can't then be used in a commercial fashion unless whoever distributes it gets a commercial license from the library's copyright owner. Now suppose the project uses multiple libraries with such terms. That's a burden.
Then again this may be a feature, not a bug, of the model you're proposing.
I suppose that it wouldn't work in practice, though. The AGPL license (and libraries with a GPL license instead of a LGPL one) aren't really widespread, probably because of the virality clause.
> Any instance of selective enforcement being necessary is ipso facto evidence of a bad law.
Yep, and while we fix that bad law we need judges to be able to say "I won't apply that" or "I won't sentence you to jail for this". That's kinda the point.
That's what jury nullification is for, in principle.
Allowing judges to not enforce bad laws turns them into unelected legislators. It's also worse from a corruption perspective because a single bought judge in the right place is much more cost effective than having to buy a new randomly selected jury at every trial.
Ok, but what you're describing is a step (or several steps) beyond a personal website. For a personal website you only need a free hosting provider (like angelfire, geocities and co. of yestercentury) or a Wordpress hosting. No need to toy with registars, dns, cdns. Just a bit of html (heck, if you know what a url is you can just make webpages with Word), or not even that if you use a hosted blog engine.
The issue is you've just shifted the problems of the modern web to the free hosting provider. Now they have to filter out all the scams and spam. Fight against the DDOS attacks
The difference is that "Not having DRM" means the games I bought with no DRM is still there once they enable it. For example, with GOG I download the games I buy and there's no way they can enable DRM on the copies I made.
On the other hand, if the games already have DRM and it gets worse or for whatever reason Valve goes under and you can't play your games anymore, well... you can't play any DRMed game without using whatever DRM mechanism they'll choose next.
In other words "No DRM -> DRM" and "DRM -> Worse DRM" have different outcomes.
> Valve has been doing business this way forever.
And Google's motto was "Don't be evil" and for a good chunk of their life they weren't. That worked out well, did it? I'm not saying Valve will do a 180 and squander all the good faith it acquired. I'm just saying it's not beyond the realm of possibility.
But you are right there is always the possibility they turn to shit. The advantage is that compared to other DRMs it is trivial to break even by yourself and all steam games are already freely available cracked so if they do just torrent them.
>>For example, with GOG I download the games I buy and there's no way they can enable DRM on the copies I made.
There is no way for Steam to enable DRM on a copy of a game you made after you downloaded it from Steam. It's a weird argument to use really - once you copied the data elsewhere neither platform can do anything with it.
There are a few DRM-free Steam games but most devs on Steam enable the DRM. This isn't Steam's fault but Steam is holding the reins of that access. It works great now, so smooth you can't tell there's DRM. But at the end of the day most of my collection is at the whims of Valve.
I'm personally concerned about what happens when Gabe retires or shuffles off this mortal coil, and his replacement comes with a "fresh" revenue idea. He's a one of a kind visionary leader, it's not a sure thing that his successor is the same. I've been baited and switched so many times in the past few decades that it's hard to blindly trust any company for more than the very immediate future.
>I'm personally concerned about what happens when Gabe retires
From the couple documentaries I have seen over the years it already seems like he is basically retired, only working on things he is interested in like the brain interface stuff. I think as long as valve stays a private company the enshitification will be limited.
If the DRM is enabled, the game does a simple "Is the game available in the user's library?" and steams says yes or no.
If the game didn't have DRM enabled, no check is made. Copy the game folder elsewhere, without steam install and it should launch.
Devs can enable the DRM afterward, but your copy won't be locked.
But even then, if valve goes bad guy, the DRM is simple enough to be broken, and there is no double check or something preventing you from playing (unlike Denuvo which encrypts the game and has multiple separate checks for the DRM).
Yes (that's the point of a DRM), but like I said, the DRM is easily broken. Some games can also still use steam features when cracked (like joining lobbies, inviting friends, etc), and it's the same "crack" for every game (not withstanding other DRM the game may have).
With Valve, I'm more concerned of not being able to download the games if they go under, than the DRM on the games I have. Over time, the Steam DRM has also been more permissive than before, as I can now play my "family's" games and they can play mine.
Part of the apparently forgotten but huge amount of work that went into making digital storefront for games that people trust to work was that Valve publicly talked about verifying things such as a procedure to globally strip DRM from all games, in case Steam was to cease operations.
Ok, but sideloading is already a thing. What will this way to install unverified apps be? I doubt it will be an extra screen asking "Are you super-duper sure you want to enable sidloading???" after the one already asking the same question.
They talk about doing it under pressure, so my guess is there might be a waiting period before you're allowed free reign, or maybe per-app. Or some level of calling google, listening to 10 minutes of how poor billionaires are going to starve if you have control of your own device before being allowed to unlock it.
I'm a long-time Debian user and I have no idea who you're talking about. How much weight do they actually carry? Who is this influencer you're talking about?
I gave an example of something I remembered from last month. I can't remember the exact name of the account, and I normally block them afterwards or mute them from the feed.
The reason I am complaining about this is I was trying to find some good info to send to a friend. I ended up making my own videos to send to them as I had 3 or 4 different people asking me to show them how to do things on Debian. So I ended up recording how to do it myself.
I will also complain about it in the manner I wish. Since you have no called me a clown, I will now complain about it more vaguely.
I legitimately do not understand this kind of behavior.
A: "I have an excellent example that clearly illustrates my point."
B: "Great, what is it?"
A: "Uhm, if you don't already know, then you're stupid. You can easily find it anywhere."
We're gatekeeping evidence that supports our claims now?
What? I’ve been active frequently on Mastodon since 2018 and I have no idea who or what you’re talking about. A link would be helpful rather than playing the “oh you know who…” game.
There are loads of tech influencers in the Linux space on Youtube and loads of techie platforms. There is various levels of cringe in the Linux space, some of it is honestly embarrassing. If you don't see it already, you are going to tell me it isn't a problem. There isn't one person doing this. There are plenty.
It isn't I won't say. It is I can't remember because I pretty much insta-block it when I see it.
Some notable examples of stuff I've seen in Linux / Tech land the last few months:
- One person was dressed in a furry lizard suit, while compiling gentoo.
- Another person made a song about Debian packages. I thought it was a gag at first.
- Another woman was dressed in a school girl outfit, cat ears and a push up bra (not sure she was Linux stuff, but it was tech).
I am not expecting everyone to be some greybeard in his office but some of it is a bit much and sometimes they have really good info in the video, but the initial impression is so jarring that it will put people off (I had people tell me this).
I actually made my own YouTube channel because I was trying to find decent information to send to someone who was a new Linux user without this BS. I ended up making videos myself detailing how to setup a bunch of stuff up.
The point we're making in this thread is that we aren't seeing the same things you are, and it's highly likely that whatever comments you're thinking about are not representative of the kinds of opinions people in tech hold.
I am not going back through months worth of YouTube history to satisfy people have insinuated that I have been lying on a claim that isn't even that controversial. I mainly watch car and canal boats videos these days and don't bother with tech stuff outside of security and home lab bits and pieces.
I was trying to find videos palatable to someone that is interested and just wants to run something reliable instead of Windows. I didn't find any.
> The point we're making in this thread is that we aren't seeing the same things you are, and it's highly likely that whatever comments you're thinking about are not representative of the kinds of opinions people in tech hold.
Linux cringe is a thing that been a complaint for a while. That why people do copy-pasta of the GNU\Linux stuff, the "programmer socks" meme, "I run arch BTW" and there is the infamous dropbox post made on here back in 2008.
Most people that don't exist in online world, find all of this very weird and off putting.
You are asking for something unreasonable i.e. I go through possibly several months of YouTube history in a comment section argument to "prove" that there people in the Linux community that do weird and cringey things, which is something that they are known for.
This is after you insinuated that I lied less than two comments ago. You put remembering in scare quotes and some other dude told me I was a "clown" because I can't remember username I saw months ago.
So no. I won't be doing that for you or anyone else now.
What you asked me to do was overly onerous for a discussion.
Even if I found the links and gave you them, I will be told there isn't a problem (especially judging by the username) and I am "taking things too seriously".
There is huge amount of cringe and embarrassing behaviour in the Linux community and Tech community in general. It is well known and denying it is utterly disingenuous.
Isn't that something you can do with streaming services as well?
I understand that many people choose to go with playlists, but it's not like the choice of listening to full albums has been taken away (yet).
Sure, the implementation is lackluster, with gaps between tracks when there shouldn't be one (really annoying on ambient/atmospheric/drone tracks), but still better than nothing.