Unlikely. This noise will come and go. Managing such project is not trivial, so little chance somebody capable enough will be both available and willing to step in over such little thing.
2 Likes
Open software developers can spend years building capabilities and trust in their product, and it just takes one day for clowns like these to break it. Basically their defense is, âyou canât punish us, because we work for freeâ.
Maybe thereâs a creative commons license varient, that could address this kind of bullshit. Prank the end user, lose permission to work with the source code.
9 Likes
This is just one of many reasons why I now loath April Fools. April First is not something I look forward to any more. Itâs not fun. God forbid some actual tragic news break on April 1st, as no one will take it seriously. The internet has ruined this fun (at least it used to be) holiday. At least Iâm guaranteed 1 day of the year that I completely lay off the internet.
6 Likes
Did the same, although I canât recall the Powershot model number, and the camera worked flawlessly with the CHDK firmware, as I expected it would. Itâs unclear to me why ML would put something so completely stupid into their code. Why not go with an easter egg that doesnât stop the user from accessing/utilizing the device and instead makes some trivial, easy-to-reverse change in the image? Or prints a message in the cameraâs LCD readout? Basically anything other than making the camera uselessâthatâs just stupid and insulting.
1 Like
Weâve drifted into dangerous territory. Weâve allowed our lives to depend on an unmanageable torrent of interacting systems at the same time weâve allowed the curators of those systems to cede all responsibility for them.
If you donât like the default behavior of a system â your Android phone, your Chrome browser, even your Windows desktop â they will happily inform you that there are third-party Apps, extensions, and programs out there which can give you exactly what you want⌠so kindly give us your money, shut up, and go away.
Once you install such programs, youâll usually be warned that thereâs no warranty, no support, that it should not be depended up on in any way, that it will probably not be updated⌠and would you kindly make a donation?
If youâre lucky and the program is extremely popular and regularly updated to match the platform updates â bearing in mind that the platform developers generally donât care about breaking your third-party programs, even though thatâs what letâs them tell you to piss off without seriously risking market share â then you run the risk of something like this, because these arenât professionals and thereâs no way to stay on top of and audit all this code. If you had that kind of time and expertise, you would just write the code yourself. So code reviews essentially never happen, and volunteers will have their âjokesâ, and theyâll tell you that you never even had to the right to be angry about it.
And if you really donât like it â and itâs an open-source project â theyâll tell you to fork the project if your so angry about it. Which they know you wonât do, because if you had that time and expertise, you would have just written the damn thing yourself.
We suffer from the tyranny of temporary fixes, devoid of responsibility.
8 Likes
Sounds like the regular software industry. (Where, to add injury to the insult, they wonât even give you the code.)
1 Like
I donât know. If the project is on Github (or a similar site), it would seem to me that users could easily fork, make trivial changes, and then use the software as needed. Programming challenges remain, to be sure, especially if itâs unfamiliar code/language, but online versioning systems offer some leeway in this context.
3 Likes
Imagine frantically trying to clear the shit from your camera while witnessing a crime or questionable takedown by crooked cops.
4 Likes
Unfortunately, that describes the state of virtually all software, barring only some niche applications that tend to be bowel looseningly expensive. Any software that mere mortals actually buy almost certainly disclaims any and all liability for anything whatsoever, with a possible exception for install media that prove defective within 30 days, and maybe the refund of the purchase price; but no more.
There are a few small areas where software is provided with formal correctness proofs and utmost seriousness; but they are rare, tend to lag ages behind on features, and cost hideous amounts. Even cost-insensitive military customers have a habit of going âCOTSâ because they think that it will save them money.
This is in no way a disagreement with your point; it is the case that virtually every computer you interact with is either a teetering heap of bugs, sloppy kludges, and deadline-driven mediocrity, or programmed to advance an agenda hostile to you, or both.
You just canât blame this on some dumbass who doesnât know what falls within the bounds of âfunnyâ and the stuff he puts on the internet for free. Youâd have the same level of recourse if (not at all hypothetically, this happens from time to time) your antivirus vendor accidentally released signature updates that flagged critical OS components as malware and removed them. No responsibility for incidental damages, suckers.
4 Likes
Well clearly Iâm the only person that thought that was hilarious.
Sure, if Iâd paid money for it, not so much, but for something free? Nah.
I run Cyanogenmod on my phone, and Iâm sure I could make a case that my phone stopping working could actually be life threatening, but realistically, when I made the choice to void my warranty and use a piece of software thatâs not even stable yet* I made my choice, and Iâll take the responsibility for anything that goes wrong.
When you pay zero money for a something, youâre entitled to zero support. You may expect, or want more than zero, but, well, TNSTAAFL.
- Iâm using the nightly releases of CM12, itâs actually pretty stable, but it does occasionally reboot for no reason.
1 Like
Setting aside how incredibly stupid it is to alienate your audience when with a free, open source project, what a stupid excuse for an April foolâs prank. If youâre going to go for it, donât blow your opportunity on something as dumb as that.
Just crashing? In what world is that a prank?
Their possibilities were almost endless. Use the facial detection to swap everybodyâs heads. Add speech bubbles above everyone. Turn the sky blood red. And heck, while youâre at it, save the original photo too.
Not only stupid, but amateur-hour as well.
13 Likes
Hereâs a glass of water. I may or may not have put a laxative in it. But itâs free, and laxatives donât cause permanent damage, so what are you complaining about? Haha April fools!
These guys must be ~13 years old.
7 Likes
So thatâs where the âfor shits and gigglesâ saying comes from!?
6 Likes
Thatâs a good point. It would have taken real wit to make an obvious, visible, one day only substitution. Change the font to papyrus, add extra silly modes to the menu options, change the wording in a clever way. Simply breaking it in a mysterious way, in no way suggests âfunâ, it just suggests these are not people youâd ever want to share a laugh with.
6 Likes
As a video professional who has in the past relied on a hacked camera to get better results (Panasonic GH2, not magic lantern), the âchill, this isnât intended for professional workâ part feels disingenuous.
What sort of person would risk buying older, not-so-good-for-video-in-stock-form hardware like the Canons, download and install this risky thing that needs very expensive memory cards to run on, and deal with a hugely inconvenient raw image workflow all in the name of a higher class of image quality? Fringe enthusiasts perhaps, but mostly professionals.
Sure, a good pro will have a Plan B always ready in case of sudden equipment failure (or falling into the ocean, or being stolen etc) but itâs a matter of trust. Those hacks are supposed to be made by and for a community of like-minded people who help each other, and a prank like this doesnât help.
Now that Blackmagic Design have shown huge leaps forward in firmware quality, pace of innovation and customer respect after the shaky initial launch of their cameras (and some tasty new models announced just now), Iâd jump ship from hacked Canon in a second if I wasnât in the Blackmagic ship all along. Ahoy!
5 Likes
Assumptions in the above:
- All value can be measure in dollar$
- Expectation of support is identical to trusting that the developer(s) wonât deliberately create malicious code.
7 Likes
[quote=âfuzzyfungus, post:29, topic:55468â]You just canât blame this on some dumbass who doesnât know what falls within the bounds of âfunnyâ and the stuff he puts on the internet for free. Youâd have the same level of recourse if (not at all hypothetically, this happens from time to time) your antivirus vendor accidentally released signature updates that flagged critical OS components as malware and removed them. No responsibility for incidental damages, suckers.
[/quote]In theory, if your antivirus vendor screwed up that badly, you would never buy any of their products again, tell all your friends never to buy their products again, and/or start elaborate Internet memes about the quality of their products â and they would be out of business.
If an open source project does that â well, then itâs just hilarious.
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Counterexample: McAfee (or is it Norton Antivirus?)
[FACEPALM]
âŚand the memes, the memes!..
1 Like
Making the change is comparatively easy.
But then if it does not get adopted into the main code, where the other developers are, youâre doomed to keep it up to date alone. And things it depends on may be changing under your feet. (Case in point, the lsusb patch I made for myself to query the devices for their vendor/name/serial in the short output. Todo, publish it.)
2 Likes
As an, ahem, hacker, Iâve seen some pretty stupid things get through dedicated teams. I wouldnât say one is better than the other; they just have different goals and non-overlapping coverage.
