I do not believe (but of course IANAL) that you can use GPL v3 code in iPhone applications, as they have to be DRM signed by Apple. However, you can make GPL v2 applications for the iPhone.

The kernel, which is one of the biggest, certainly the most famous, GPL v2 project isn't planning to change to GPL v3.

I'm impressed how Perens feels he can just brush away all disagreement with the GPL v3 because "Linus had a personal issue with it, some I'm ignoring that".

Joining the GPL v3 steamroller isn't going to make developers any more willing to use it.

(Question Author) - Yes that is the game I'm talking about!

You make a very good point about the artwork - I'm a terrible, terrible artist, both in terms of drawing, and just being good at composition. Getting some better artwork could well be a good idea to make the game smoother to play. You should have seem some of the earlier UI designs. They were REALLY horrible.

I spent literally months being frustrated by various levels in Lemmings (not that I would claim any puzzle game can compare with that), but I still don't think I would change any of it.

Of course back when I played Lemmings, the only hints I could get get was from the other people I went to school with. Now I could just jump on the internet when I get stuck.

(Article Author) While I think hard stats are better, I'm not sure the way you suggest going about it is the best.

I bet if WoW offered two identical releases, one where you started level 1 and one where you could start on any level you wanted most people would choose the second. However, long term that would probably give WoW a worse reputation and an overall loss of sales.

(Original author of the post here)

What about the obvious third option - I want to make a game that is the most fun for everyone else?

Even if the aim is the sell the game, what are the features that will sell the game? Just because a bunch of users say they want something, doesn't actually mean that adding that will make the game better, or more popular.

The real question is (I think) one of self-control. In your (and other's) experience, how easy (if at all) should it be to skip through parts of a game? Should users just be trusted to skip whatever and all parts they want, or should they be forced to put more thought and time in, because in the end they will enjoy it more?

While I find anything I want to be stable and distributable I now write in Python, I still can't resist pulling out shell scripting, and a splattering of grep, awk, find, mv and xargs to do 95% of the simple pushing around and chopping up of files I find myself doing every day.

I find shell scripting have a nasty habit of not working quiet right when moved between Linux, the BSDs and Mac to be safe, and it's always a pain to write scripts that work correctly with spaces in file names.

Why isn't there (or is there?) a simple python cheat guide, or library, that do the same things as grep, awk, find, mv and xargs?

Including google itself? (which is being flagged)

Yes, why not look for something original, like (I believe), my iPhone game :) iTune Link. While there has been a lot of real problems with apple and the iPhone store, I believe it is a great place for indie games, providing a way of getting some money out of small, fun games.

It's easy to do those kind of hacks in closed-source projects too, that's why almost every commercial game has moved to not trusting the client as much as possible, only sending it what the client can see and only accepting input it trusts as valid.

Sure, the benefits might be great, but people should still have the choice if they want to be scraped or not. If it is so great, everyone who disables it will find their views drop while other news sites shoot up in popularity. That's how these things are supposed to work, not "this is good for you, honest, so I'm going to do without even if you don't want it".

I watched the first six or so episodes of BSG, decided it was a bit dull, and stopped.

Now, my figures may be way off, but it looks to me like the last episode of BSG pulled in less than 2 million viewers, unlike Chuck, a fun show I'm currently enjoying, which pulled in around 6 million. (Do correct me if I'm way off).

BSG is a show with a very vocal audience, who enjoy discussing and dissecting every issue all over the internet, despite my best attempts to avoid them. However, I'm not sure it's actually that fun to watch. It certainly wasn't at first.

Who is the fifth cylon? I really couldn't care less. I don't hate BSG, but just to put some perspective on things, for most people it isn't that big.

I'm not saying I don't just this group too. Just that this is why there is buggy software, and no amount of process is going to solve it. We, including me, are willing to trade bugs for features, so that is the kind of software the clever person is going to create.

The sad truth is, given the choice between a well-written, stable and fast application with a tiny set of features and a giant slow buggy program with every feature under the sun, too many users choose the second.

If people refused to use and pay for buggy applications, they would either get fixed or die off.