Monthly Archives: September 2006

On Free Software and FSF

WARNING: This entry is somewhat political in nature.

Given the recent controversies about the GPL v3 draft, I thought I’d give my insight on the Free Software Foundation and especially its founder, Richard M. Stallman, better known as RMS. I won’t cover the GPL v3 debate as I haven’t read the license draft, though I think that the kernel developers’ standing must be at least given attention. Read More »

Cooperation and stupidity

While I was viewing Yamato Video’s latest Samurai Troopers DVD, I noticed that in the trailers section there was a part showing off some footage of Chrno Crusade. As a few may know, it’s written Chrno and not Chrono for some obscure reason. What it matters though is that Planet Manga already edited the relevant manga with the name Chrono Crusade (same as what AD Vision did in the United States).

Of course, Yamato didn’t bother changing the title to stir interest from people who already bought the manga. I can bet the adaptation will alos be different and nothing like the manga. This is not new in the Italian market, which is basically a mafia. Everyone knows each other, there are stupid, petty rivalries between the head sections of different companies which basically means that any good idea of cooperation - for mutual advantage - is scrapped  because of stupidity.

Healthy competition and cooperation help. In this case there is no competition, just mutual ignorance. The fact that sales’ figures are kept hidden should tell something. I hope that someday a  real company, whith a sensible business plan (so, nothing like Shin Vision is doing, for example) will come and force the others to act accordingly.

Kubuntu Edgy Knot 3 artwork

Jucato has some screenshots of the recently released Kubuntu Edgy Eft Knot 3. I like very much the new artwork, but it doesn’t seem that there’ll be Oxygen icons, at least from what I can gather. In any case I will try to play with it as soon as it hits a beta stage.

On unrelated news, I still have got some RSI issues, so I’ll have to slow down posting. Bah.

Another S.T.E.A.L. snapshot

As promised, I got around to write for a while during this weekend and here is the result, a new S.T.E.A.L. snapshot ready for download.

Notable changes include:

  • New dialogue between Jim and Satsuki at the start of chapter 4. This should show better that Jim is and will be an important character during the story development;
  • Text revisions throughout chapter 4;
  • A whole new part of the chatper 4 story, that can be considered now roughly halfway.

On a related topic, I’m still working on the stealsaga domain, and I think it should be ready at least in alpha form in a week or two.