DVDRtools (DVD-R/DVD-RW) burning sofware ported to AmigaOS

[System]

I don't have anything personal against anyone here.

But before you all jump up and down shouting "wow this guy is great he's a genius!!!!", note how lazy his port is, and redundant given both MorphOS and AmigaOS' bundled DVD software, notwithstanding the fact that neither are publically available, either or both will be pretty soon.

I don't think it is at all "news" that some lazy coder did a straight port of some nasty GNU tool - there are websites full of lazy Linux ports out there.

If you think I'm being rude: maybe I am being "rude" in that I am calling someone lazy. But not without reason, which I happily gave, along with multiple solutions to the problem at hand which show that the feature is minimal effort to acheive.

Am I to be chastised for telling the truth, or being helpful and intelligent?

The guy who ported these tools can go through code to get it to even compile on AmigaOS or MorphOS, let alone work, yet he can't even add a handful of lines to allow you to specify the device and unit.

Now what do you call that, when it's at home?

He can, however, spend the time to write a huge explanation on his website of how he didn't add anywhere from 3 to 10 lines of code to the tools, make excuses about his competance, and in any case, instruct you have to download a new archive for each device!

Is that just an example of the inability to manage one's own time? Come on, enlighten me.

I actually have better things to do, that people are paying me to do, than fixing other peoples' lazy ports of Linux software and making it run better on MorphOS.

Like creating original MorphOS software. Improving the OS in general. Creating SDK components. Writing documentation. Writing proposals and design schematics. Coming up with great ideas for features. Implementing all of them!

With so much on my plate, and with myself and my colleagues seemingly getting no appreciation for the hard work we seem to put in, day in, day out, making hardware, designing the software and providing services to the Community (hey look, all you DCE repair people are getting brand new boards!), I don't feel at all motivated to give you another service that you'll all just whine about anyway, and call me "rude" or "arrogant" for it.

Is it rude to point out that someone could have spent 30 seconds more adding immense amounts of value and quality to their application, rather than writing a bunch of ugly HTML to excuse himself from it?

Is it arrogant to feel disappointed in the fickle nature of the Community, to point out that we have done so much work, and to be generally unenthusiastic about the comments we receive from bitching Amiga users?

Nope. I don't think so.

Let's see what YOU lot are doing to push the envelope around here, instead of just posting onto forums and arguing about what a real Amiga is?

=Neko=

[GadgetMaster]

@ Neko

I actually have better things to do, that people are paying me to do

You then go on and say:

and with myself and my colleagues seemingly getting no appreciation for the hard work we seem to put in, day in, day out,

I think getting paid is worth more than appreciation any day when considering renumeration for effort and time.

lazy programmer yaddah, yaddah , blah de blah de blah.....

Ok so the guy done an incomplete port, so what ? why complain about something thats free.

I think its a sense of inferiority complex when a news item about somones software port makes you all defensive and brings about an challenging attitide.

Are only Genesi worthy of praise (worship) in your eyes.

Is nobody allowed to encourge any other developer on this site?

I just do not understand your stance at all.

and to be generally unenthusiastic about the comments we receive from bitching Amiga users?

I didn't see anyone bitching about anything on this thread but you. :-o

Pull yourself together man. :-P

[mdwh2]

"Always the Amiga Community.. always awarding and rewarding people who do the least work, and shunning those who are truly pushing the envelope."

It's not like there's a single person here. Different people have different opinions - some will give praise to any new utility, others seem to troll articles trying to put down any new software, when they could have simply skipped the article if it wasn't of interest to them. And you seem to be an example of the latter, right now..

No one claimed that this was some earth shattering revolutionary piece of news. But it's still news. You didn't even manage to provide examlpes of software which does what this does *now* - so if this is the only such piece of DVD software, then it certainly deserves to be news.

"Let's see what YOU lot are doing to push the envelope around here, instead of just posting onto forums and arguing about what a real Amiga is?"

I'm writing software, both professionally and in my spare time, instead of spending time on forums slagging off other people's software.

[kd7ota]

Meh,

Dont see how people can argue about stuff. The dude just worked on something for Amiga, so give him some credit.  :-)

[System]

Why complain about something that's free? Well, because being free is no excuse for being lacklustre.

Genesi aren't the only company or person worthy of praise. Sure. Maybe we make some mistakes too. We're worthy of some criticism. But some of it (of the calibre "you aren't Amiga so we dismiss everything you do as a tactic to con us") isn't justified at all.

But it'd be damned nice one day if I could show up for work, check a forum or two while I do a compile or a CVS checkout, and not see a bunch of people ignoring the great stories about our products, but instead going on and on..

"hey, wow, some guy lazily ported some rather buggy GNU tools"

As for the Amiga Community - yeah, it's a bunch of people all with different opinions and viewpoints, but one thing is strikingly clear in my experience: not enough people who know a good thing when they see it (new motherboards, new commercial software, new prospects), and too many people willing to accept any old #### (no AmigaOS 4 yet, and WAY too many ixemul-based simple recompiles being passed off as some kind of acheivement, http://amiga.sf.net as an example)

I know you've been waiting almost a decade for your fabled new Amigas, but settling for some of the solutions because of such poor reasons as "it's free", "Linux has it" and [insert sly dig at Eyetech and Amiga Inc. here] is just a little much.

Sure the guy did something for the Amiga. Why should we give him any credit for doing such a piss poor job, though, when he clearly had the time to sit down and resolve the issues he had, since he clearly spent a lot of time explaining it?

Here, let's put it this way:

Well done for porting the tools! But why couldn't you add a check for an environment variable, in the simplest case?

Not looking at the source right now, but let's assume he's using a string and integer variables to store device name and unit.

char *device;
int unit;

.. these are already in the source somewhere, in theory. Now, add these lines of code before the device is opened:

device = getenv("dvdrtools_device");
unit = atoi(getenv("dvdrtools_unit"));

if (!device) exit(20);

... 3 lines of code. 3 lines of code.
See how they run? See how they run?
Isn't it a bit lazy not to write those lines?
Is it really so hard to make these designs?
Have you ever seen such a thing in your life?
As those 3 lines of code.

=Neko=
(giggling)

[mdwh2]

"We're worthy of some criticism. But some of it (of the calibre "you aren't Amiga so we dismiss everything you do as a tactic to con us") isn't justified at all."

No, but I don't see that your criticism here is justified either. You're making a perfect example of the sort of person you're arguing against!

Personally I get on with programming rather than browsing forums when I'm at work;) But your idea that small snippets of news about random free pieces of software somehow distracts from attention to your company is both strange and somewhat selfish. Amiga.org gives plenty of attention to Genesi, whether it's big or small. I mean, come on - looking right now, a massive 30% of new articles of amiga.org's front page are dedicated specifically to your company. Is this not enough?

If a company feels like it's not getting enough publicity, there are ways to try to rectify this. Your method seems most unprofessional.

"Why should we give him any credit for doing such a piss poor job, though, when he clearly had the time to sit down and resolve the issues he had, since he clearly spent a lot of time explaining it?"

Firstly, no one's asking you to credit him. But no one's asking you to troll articles that don't interest you either.

Secondly, if you're so concerned about the flaws in the software, have you told the author? One  thing that annoys me is when people seem to take the effort to talk about some bug or problem in software I've written - but they post about it to some random forum, rather than bothering to tell me.

[System]

I never said news items like this "deflect attention" from Genesi.

What I said was that news items like this (hardly the most exciting thing in the world) end up with a stream of 100% positive comments.

Whereas a news item about something GOOD (the Pegasos, perhaps, but there are other things totally unrelated to Genesi that get ignored..) is met with a stream of rabid criticism from all sides, not even related to the news item at hand.

All I'm saying is

1) dvdrtools is hardly the best thing since sliced bread

2) the port is rather slack at best anyway, so what's all the excitement about?

3) you wouldn't know a good thing if it slapped you in the face anyway, just like the rest of the Amiga Collective.

I prefer to live in a state of perpetual apathy, but it really pisses me off to see people recompiling boring #### Linux utilities rather than creating original works. There is more to the world than GNU tools.

At least if you ARE going to do it, most of them would do better if they were truly adapted to Amiga- or MorphOS-native ports (i.e. don't use ixemul if at all possible), and in dvdrtools' case, since I don't think it's possible to do what it does in an ixemul environment, at least they could have added 2 tiny little extra options if they did the work to abstract it!

BTW, the author provided an environment variable edition of his software now.. startling coincidence, eh? How do I specify the unit, though?

Also it should be noted that his changes don't seem to be available as source downloads, nor are they checked into Savannah. So, if I were to modify the source code, how exactly would I do it?

=Neko=

[mdwh2]

I see what you're saying better now (although it's false to suggest that Pegasos gets only criticism) - but there are some very good reasons for the way things are like this:

- Things that are bigger or more successful tend to attract more criticism. Whether it's jealousy, or the fact that no one cares about little things, or that things that have more influence and power over the market place need to be criticise because it's harder to get away from them. Look at how much people slag off Windows.
- There doesn't seem to be any competition for this product. If there was, then someone might say "x does the job much better", and that would actually be a helpful contribution to the thread. MorphOS/Pegasos do have competitors, in the form of Amiga Inc (and other platforms in general).

Do you think John Carmack will be losing sleep over the fact that some will probably criticise Doom 3, where as little freeware games go uncriticised? And does someone who replies positively to news about such a game have no idea about what a "good thing" is, because someone else slagged off Doom 3?

"dvdrtools is hardly the best thing since sliced bread"

Who said it was?

"the port is rather slack at best anyway, so what's all the excitement about?"

Presumably people were excited about this being the first DVD burning software for the Amiga (if it is?) Of course it's less so exciting if it has flaws and isn't that good, but it's hardly surprising to see some mild excitement.

"you wouldn't know a good thing if it slapped you in the face anyway, just like the rest of the Amiga Collective."

I'd rather that you didn't make assumptions about me - feel free to provide a link where I have taken part in slagging off your company (usually anything I say about it has been positive). You otoh are fitting into the "slag off anything new that comes along" profile perfectly.

If you gave up this idea of an "Amiga Collective", you'd realise that it isn't strange to have two people holding views that would be contradictory if one person had both those views.

Why not go back to these anti-genesi threads and argue it out there, asking them why they didn't slag off this software? You seem to be intent on arguing against a point of view that no one here in this thread holds.

[CannonFodder]

Hey Neko, Whats up man?

You paranoid or summat?

Everyone out to get Genesi?? I don't think so

They don't get half as much criticism as you are talking about.

You over reacting I think.

As a Genesi rep shouldn't you show more diplomacy an all that? Why stoop to troll level?? :-D

Millions of people  criticise MicroCrap but their rep always say that they do not comment about their competitors

Take a leaf from their book , you will look the more professional for it.

This should be taken as kind advice only, otherwise I do not permit you to reply as I own the Intellectual property of this post Bleah!! :-P  ;-)  :-D