Richard Stallman is a large man. A large man with a beard that could easily hide a family of poor, migrant workers from La Migra for days on end. Am I claiming that Mr. Stallman is guilty of hiding illegal immigrants in his beard for fun and profit? No, I'm claiming that he hates video game consoles.
A Dtoid reader, Matthew, sent us an email earlier directing my attention to this ZDNet blog, where Mr. Stallman converses with one of the writers there about the evils of the consoles we all have in our homes. To wit;
Q: One final question. We're seeing more and more devices, and I'm thinking specifically of games consoles — I know that my kids have one in the house — where there is no —
Richard Stallman: I wouldn't. You have to learn how to say no to your kids.
Q: That's true, that's true, I wouldn't deny it. Now, there is no free software at all for devices like this [correction: Yellow Dog supports some console(s)].
Richard Stallman: That's why there is no possible ethical way you could use one, and so you shouldn't have it.
Q: All right, I think I'll take the kids out on the bike more often.
Richard Stallman: That would be much better for them.
Far be it from me to call anyone with facial hair of that magnitude a raving psychopath, but I think all the years of being the Ingrid Newkirk of the FOSS movement have turned Richard into the kind of raving zealout that Muslim clerics go gay for. Refusing to give your children a device that would bring them endless amounts of joy simply because you have been disallowed from writing a program that would make the Xbox 360 send a text message to your Linux-enabled toaster whenever a new .bin of the first season of Spaced hits Mininova, is not only crazy, it's the sort of thing that drives children to grow beards like Mr. Stallman's.
Seriously, did you see that beard?!?
Contest:
3:04 AM on 04.07.2007
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I can think of no greater evil in the Linux community than Beryll. Why play cool video games when you can watch spreadsheet windows wiggle like jello? Look at the advanced physics engine make those application icons bounce around the screen! Puts your XBox to shame, yo!
Take Stallman in context, all his life he has been doing amasing things for the computing world (PS3 runs linux right? ;-P) and just because he doesnt think siting kids down in front of a mass marketed-DRMed to high heaven-gameing console doesnt make him bad.
Stallman,go buy your kinds DSs then get them homebrew, its not al bad :-)
PS, I have always wanted Stallman's beard.
2 - I just saw him give a lecture at Lehigh University. He has some pretty cool ideas, but most of his theories are way too far to the left for me. Someone at the lecture recorded the whole thing, and videoed the Q&A part. If anyone is interested, I can post links.
The DS is "horribly expencive" [sic] and the prices are "over inlated." You're joking, right?
If you're not, get off the retarded entitlement train. There's a reason that open source software tends to be functional, but not nearly as much as its commercial counterpart. Further, name me three homebrew titles that are actually a complete gaming experience. Hell, try to even name one for the DS. That's been a cool app or two, and some games that are fun for five minutes, but ultimately they tend to greatly lack the polish and longevity of a commercial project. They don't even compare to most cheap Xbox Live Arcade original titles.
No one getting paid, whether in cash or a gold star on a resumé or both, means no real quality standards. You can't say to a team member that they're going to get canned and thus not be able to feed their family if they don't hurry up and write some decent dialog or make nice grass textures, or whatever. You get a Cave Story or an Open Office once in a while, but more often you just get really awkward Tetris clones.
But I wonder if Stallman likes, or even knows about, the GP2X?
baby Gates cries in your direction....MIT FTW ..LinuXz Torvaldez eats the baby parsing tree....