Ask Slashdot: Good, Useful Free Software For Gifts? 377
First time accepted submitter Jeng writes "I'm planning on sending flash drives to friends and family as stocking stuffers. Rather than just send a blank drive, I'm looking for what good useful free software that I can load on it — from system utilities and encryption software to fun little games." We've asked similar questions before, but software keeps getting better, and so do the prices on flash drives. So what would you give as a gift this holiday season?
Let's see: (Score:5, Informative)
Graphics:
Other stuff:
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Battle for Wesnoth
Tyrian 2000
Collection of ebooks via Project Gutenberg
That would keep someone out of trouble for a good while.
You took the words out of my mouth (Score:3)
Inkscape
GIMP
Those were the first things that came to mind for me. I use Gimp at least once a week in my job, and Inkscape probably once a month. They are great tools for those who don't need the fanciest of plug-ins. I would bet that they are mature enough now that 90% of home users who think "I need photoshop and/or illustrator" could actually get by just fine with these tools instead.
And being as most home users know what they can do with the Adobe programs, but not specifically how to do it, they could be ju
Re:Let's see: (Score:5)
Transmission is one of the worse bittorrent client available. Might as well just have them use a command line utility with the gui available in Transmission.
Never been a fan of gimp either, it it both too complicated and bloated for a simple paint replacement and does not have enough features to replace Photoshop.
For torrents you need uTorrent or its far crappier linux brother ktorrent.
and then for windows at least:
rename master
7-zip
agent ransack
chrome
Infra Recorder
Notepad++
And then for games I would recommend emulators and roms.
Dosbox, scummvm, Snex9x
And you could probably set up all of them to work directly from the drive (linux and windows both, since the emulators are all pretty small) with the games pre-installed.
I would recommend focusing on the games and picking something personally from you and not just 10,000 roms you found in a torrent.
Because for the apps at least either the receiver is technically savvy enough they he should already be able to find good software if he needs it or will not appreciated being able to search faster and better (agent ransack).
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Re:Let's see: (Score:5, Insightful)
Roms don't have to be illegal, you just have a smaller number to choose from if you are looking for freeware roms.
But it is not like everyone does not already pirate roms, lets face it the consoles and the original games are no longer produced if you wanted to pay money for them you would only be paying some used games store owner not anyone involved in making the game in the first place anyways.
Now you can make a very good argument that the developers of the game deserve your money, but I have yet to hear one for the owner of the used store.
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Well I would imagine that picking games that recipients have not heard of might be a perk.
And in Alabama dominoes may not be played on Sunday by rule of law, but like abandon-ware that law is not and cannot be enforced therefore it is not really illegal. Note: obviously some companies are still around that hold the copyright to some of these abandon-ware games, so while no one has ever been prosecuted for abandoner-ware stealing it is theoretically possible.
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I personally dump my own ROMs with retrode.org . Tends to work well and I don't have to worry about being busted for piracy.
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Re:Let's see: (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd add a few suggestions:
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It's a ridiculous idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's a ridiculous idea (Score:5, Informative)
ooh maybe we should put linux in hotel rooms (Score:4, Funny)
the penguin king demands it, justin!
Re:It's a ridiculous idea (Score:5, Interesting)
> Give other people what THEY want, not what YOU think would be cool.
Oh bullpoop. The guy is giving out USB sticks. Very handy things for almost anyone to get in their stocking. He just wants to prepopulate em with some helpful stuff. Something you can't do with closed software but you can easily do with Free Software.
And yes, plenty of people give gifts based on their particular passion. Apple folk will tend to give out iProducts. Would they give one to somebody they KNOW isn't going to use it? Hopefully not, but a lot of people on their list would so they do. What is the difference?
Stick OO.o on there of course. And Firefox, Chrome, etc. And why not Gimp, Blender, and friends. All run Windows, why not spread em around. Will everyone use them? Probably not, but a few might and those that don't can just hit delete.
Re:It's a ridiculous idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. If the guy was giving away copies of MS Office or Windows 7 or (insert popular game here), these people wouldn't be calling it "religious", but since it's OSS somehow it's different.
Re:It's a ridiculous idea (Score:4, Insightful)
No, since it's free software with an ulterior motive. It's one thing to pay for the software and give it away, but giving away free software to promote an ideology is something different.
Re:It's a ridiculous idea (Score:5, Insightful)
> Give other people what THEY want, not what YOU think would be cool.
Oh bullpoop. The guy is giving out USB sticks. Very handy things for almost anyone to get in their stocking. He just wants to prepopulate em with some helpful stuff.
Yep.
And...these views are compatible. You can think about what different people might want, and put that on their key.
Me, I would start by putting relevant family & friend photos/videos on everyone's USB stick. Even better, I'd make the effort to organize them into slideshow/video presentations, with a soundtrack and transitions. And configure them up to auto-play on the machines of the less-clueful recipients who have not disabled auto-play. :)
Mom will like that for sure. Then maybe Dad would appreciate some good apps/installers (Firefox, VLC, Abiword, etc)...and Bro would appreciate a collection of freeware/shareware/abandonware games (thinking Humble Bundle, other indies, MAME, etc)...and Sis would appreciate a few favorite DVDs, ripped and transcoded to copy straight to her iPad (gifting the DVDs as well, but doing the work for her).
Frankly it sounds like a great idea, if you think about what your family/friends would appreciate besides just another USB stick.
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Give other people what THEY want, not what YOU think would be cool. This is an absurd idea.
Baloney. You might as well just give gift cards or cash with that attitude.
A gift is an opportunity to share what you think is cool with someone else on the chance that they will think it's cool too. Maybe they won't think it's cool, but that's no skin off their nose, it was free anyway...
lots of options (Score:4, Informative)
well you can use a bootable USB of course, or you could use virtualization-on-a-stick, using qemu or portable virtual-box
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/using-a-portable-virtualbox-to-run-linux-from-usb/ [pendrivelinux.com]
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/run-a-live-linux-cd-from-within-windows/ [pendrivelinux.com]
or you could use portable app's projects off of sourceforge.
Tons of free games (Score:2, Informative)
Works off a CD, DVD or USB flash drive. live.linuX-gamers.net [linux-gamers.net]
other bits to consider besides software (Score:5, Insightful)
How about a big collection of free music/ebooks/movies/art, etc? Maybe consider putting together a digital slideshow of photos and movies of family and friends, too.
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How about a big collection of free music/ebooks/movies/art, etc?
Some hints:
* http://magnatune.com
* http://dig.ccmixter.org/
* http://archive.org/
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I can't believe you left off Project Gutenberg, as they even let you download ISO images of their collection.
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_CD_and_DVD_Project [gutenberg.org]
Re:other bits to consider besides software (Score:5, Insightful)
How about a big collection of free music/ebooks/movies/art, etc? Maybe consider putting together a digital slideshow of photos and movies of family and friends, too.
I think you're by far the most insightful in the discussion so far. I have to think that generally speaking, software that is useful (to the recipient) and free (available to the recipient already) is likely to be owned by the recipient. Sending people Firefox or Foxit Reader or 7Zip is pointless because either the don't have any clue how to or why to use it, or they already do. Yes, a generalization, but I suspect that loading up a bunch of software is just going to waste the recipient's time, forcing them to delete it all. On the other hand, MEDIA might be cool. And the time spent checking out Creative Commons (and other sources of) music and so on rewards the sender too. Everyone wins.
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Do one better than this. You have a month. Go and borrow old photo albums from people and start scanning. You family will thrill over old wedding and vacation photos with embarrassing haircuts and awful fashions that they had forgotten.
See how many pictures of their parents as kids you can find for your nieces and nephews. Bonus points if they are wearing clothes or fashions that are completely different from their current personalities (Hey dad was completely metal!) with double bonus points if it highligh
PortableApps (Score:5, Informative)
If they are using Windows, I suggest the full collection of PortableApps from http://www.portableapps.com :-)
It will runs directly from your flash drive and is really useful!
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I second this.
I use a number of their apps at work, where they have their systems locked down. I can use Notepad++ as my default editor, instead of IE7 I can use FF with extensions (adblock, greasemonkey, etc.), among other apps.
What I use (legally) (Score:2)
PortableApps (Score:5, Informative)
Amiga Forever, (Score:2)
baby! Once I got ahold of a copy of Nuclear War online and started playing it again, kids of all generations should get to play that!
uTorrent (Score:2)
uTorrent - the gift that keeps on giving.
Sorta useful suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the idea's a lil bland, I mean ... yay you put some free apps they could go get anyway.
But.... its' a stocking stuffer, let's have a little fun, right? Why not run around a few sites like Fail blog or LOLCats and find a big heap of funny pictures, and plunk em on the drive? That way they'll plug the drive in and have some fun zipping through those and having a few laughs. You could even throw in a folder family photos and give them something unique.
But if you're dead set on giving away apps, I can tell you I'd dig it if somebody took a flash drive and put Portable versions of Chrome, Opera, Firefox, a good mail client, and... well surprise me! I say 'portable' because if I don't have to install them, I'd definitely poke around and try them out.
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I think the idea's a lil bland, I mean ... yay you put some free apps they could go get anyway.
Ditto: Results in Present Face [metacafe.com].
Re:Sorta useful suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)
yay you put some free apps they could go get anyway.
Most of the trouble of getting good free software is finding it, so I'd say the value of the software part of the gift is mostly as a list of suggestions one can conveniently test out.
free or Free? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just give them uTorrent - the gift that keeps on giving!
Seriously, though, are we talking about freeware or Free Open Source Software? There's a lot of great freeware out there; applications like Picasa, utilities like Piriform's set, games like Cave Story (a.k.a. Doukutsu Monotogari). I hope you're not ruling out closed source, since your friends and family really won't care about the difference.
Also, you should probably start by looking for popular downloads on sites like FileHippo, SourceForge, and even (groan) Download.com. There are also quite a few commercial games that were later released as freeware or free-to-play; Team Fortress 2 is a prime example.
Humble Bundles (Score:5, Interesting)
1950s or so cigarette commercials (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to have a zip file with a ton of free-use black and white cigarette/tabacco commercials. I'm sure they still exist on torrent sites. They're free and *legal*, and some will make your head spin in three different directions all at once. Then they can delete them and use your gift as a gift ;)
portableapps.com (Score:4, Informative)
The portable apps suite is a powerful free toolbox useful for any user and admin alike.
You can also customize each flash drive to the recipient of the gift. There's tons of apps available including games.
www.portableapps.com
How about other stuff - like family photos? (Score:4, Interesting)
Back in the 80s I did a Commodore 64 Christmas Disk for three years, one thing that was good about it is that I know everyone who I gave it to had a Commodore 64, and thus everything to use the disk. Now ids a different matter, you have people running potentially three platforms (Linux, Mac, Windows) with several versions as well as varying system specs. Not that FOSS software isn't a bad idea, I just hope you have time to support all those people you give it to as there will be issues depending on thier OS, and technical skills.
I have a better idea; A couple years ago I did that but included family photos, etc. stuff my family would be interested in regardless of the platform.
Besides photos, also think about video clips of the family and kids, and you can throw in PD or CC music , e-books, art, etc.
PortableApps.com (Score:2)
LiMP (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux Media Player and some CC music and movies.
Did this in '08 for my friends, still gets talked about - I still get voicemail with "Got any more of that free live music?"
Don't forget Candy & Presentation (Score:2)
I've always thought stocking stuffers should usually provide some instant gratification.
Since you're presumably giving these to less-tech literate people, there's a decent chance they won't immediately think the USB drives are awesome and wipe the disk without too much thought. Now if you tie some candy (like a candy cane) around the drive stick on a bow and make pretty, they will treat it more specially and might actually try out the software since they've already associated the USB drive as awesome, they'
Wikipedia? (Score:5, Interesting)
How about the Wikipedia database? Only 7GB (compressed) and will provide many hours of bedside reading.
Or, if you're feeling particularly generous, give them the full database including all revisions - only 28GB compressed with 7-Zip, so will fit nicely on a 32GB flash drive. This expands to over 5TB of data, so will provide many more hours of exciting reading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#English-language_Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
Mint, not Ubuntu (Score:2)
LibreOffice
7zip (and *remove* Winzip/WinRAR/whatever).
Firefox / Google Chrome
Notepad++ (associate with everything)
Thunderbird
Foxit Reader (I know it's closed source, perhaps Sumatra instead? I use both)
Picasa
Pidgin
If the receiver is a student, tools for things like Latex (Miktex + Texmaker, perhaps?)
A print copy of the manual [cryptonomicon.com].
Whatever
Portableapps.com (Score:2)
For image handling, Irfanview (Score:2)
OSS for WIN (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDisc [wikipedia.org]
Couple this with the selection from OSS-WIN solves your dilemma significantly: http://osswin.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Trinidad & Tobago Computer Society OSSWIN CD (Score:4, Informative)
Give the gift that keeps on giving (Score:3)
Fill the drive with all the malware you can find.
I would not do this. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think this is a particularly good gift. Giving people free software on top of a cheap thumb drive (even giant ones are a dime a dozen now) feels little more than a silent push to free software from whatever they might be currently using.
If you want to give them a gift, give them something like a copy of Minecraft--something they can't just download for themselves.
My Free App List (Score:4, Informative)
No. (Score:3)
Anything that you can get for free, they can get for free. If they can get it for free, it's automatically unsuitable as a gift.
Even if the software is just a bonus for the flash drives, and you're also giving them a real gift and the flash drive is just the equivalent of a candy cane, it's still a bad idea. Free software is something you're interested in. You don't give people gifts that you're interested in, or that are meant to convince them to do things that you approve of. That kind of gift is self-serving and arrogant no matter how good the cause; just giving them actual candy canes would probably be received better.
Best advice you can get. Get them gifts they want. (Score:3)
Don't be an arse and try to "convert" people to your FOSS leanings by giving them a trojan "gift horse". Seriously, either give a gift that you actually think they would like or don't bother. That gift does not have to be expensive or even bought but if it is the latter, then you actually have to have created it yourself. Taking a USB stick and copying over FOSS is not creative or a real gift. You are basically giving out a FOSS tract.
Why? (Score:5, Funny)
After having received from someone a gift that took their time and money to buy and wrap, and maybe make themselves, the last thing I would want to give in return is something that didn't cost me anything. Okay, so maybe you're also getting them a real gift. But who would install something they just found on a USB stick?
Send them a blank drive that's really blank (Score:5, Interesting)
I just bought four SanDisk USB drives, in original packaging, at Costco. I had to clean them of junk before using them. They even had autorun files and some kind of installer.
Send the guy an empty drive that's really empty. That's a real gift today.
Re:Send them a blank drive that's really blank (Score:5, Funny)
I just bought four SanDisk USB drives, in original packaging, at Costco. I had to clean them of junk before using them. They even had autorun files and some kind of installer. Send the guy an empty drive that's really empty. That's a real gift today.
That's an especially fun gift for computer security professional. Since they'll never believe the drive is actually *empty*, you've given them a fun game where they try to figure out how you hid the malware. Everybody wins.
Support (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bootable USB (Score:5, Insightful)
Bootable BSD or Linux on USB.
I'd suggest Ubuntu, with a "readme.txt" written for those who will plug it into their Windows box.
Give them a text list of apt-get commands and tell them all the software was pirated :P
Re:Bootable USB (Score:5, Insightful)
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> I'd suggest Ubuntu, with a "readme.txt" written for those who will plug it into their Windows box.
And make sure you give them WUBI instead of expecting someone new to Free Software to be willing to figure out repartitioning. Sure it doesn't perform quite as well, but the benefits balance out for new users.
Re:Bootable USB (Score:5, Insightful)
You give family software that works on what they have and know. And you give them what makes sense for that person. Give the uncle that likes to make mediocre movies for youtube a copy of Lightworks for awesome video editing. Commercial software gone open source. Knocks the socks off of the windows home movie maker bullshit he currently uses.
Paint.net for picture editing to your aunt that likes to touch up family photos, maybe.
For the artsy teenager, Blender and Inkscape, if they're not already using them.
For kids, find a good, bright, well-polished game.
For gods sake, don't give anyone a browser or office suite. People hate software that takes over for something they already have. And stick to the well-finished, good looking stuff. The rest (*) just turns them off to the whole idea of anything "free", as if it's inferior.
* gimp style stuff, powerful but ugly as shit with a [perverse | handicap | offensive] name
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For the artsy teen, promote Blender and MyPaint; needlessly inflicting vector graphics on people is criminal, and I use Inkscape about 8 hours a day at this point. My friends in the 3d biz don't have nice things to say about Blender, either, but they also complain about Maya. If/when the Doom3 engine goes open source, you might promote that instead; it has some name recognition, and gives the budding modeler something to do.
MyPaint, for those who haven't used it, is a painting program most similar (but supe
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Your post reveals in inconvenient truth.
Lightworks was developed as commercial software. Now trying a new free version + subscription pro version model.
Blender was developed as commercial software. After bankruptcy a charitable appeal bought it for the open source community.
Paint.net was developed by a Microsoft intern. It's a free download but not open source.
Out of the four, only Inkscape was developed from the start by the FOSS community.
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Also, while the Blender story is interesting, why does that matter from a FOSS perspective? Don't deathbed converts get admitted to Heaven?
Re:Bootable USB (Score:4, Insightful)
The inconvenient truth is that the FOSS movement doesn't develop good applications. There's an old saying that a camel is a horse designed by committee. And there seems to be something of that in software development. A good app with a good UI requires a visionary designer. And open source projects don't tend to have that, or don't give the authority to that one person to make the decisions.
There's perhaps an exception when there's a single developer who is also a good designer, who starts a project and progresses it singlehandedly to a viable level. But developers who are also good designers are as rare as hens teeth.
Note that the one exception, Inkscape, had such a singular person at it's beginnings (as "Gill") - Raph Levien.
Most FOSS proponents on Slashdot are leeches. They love OSS because it gives them software for nothing. Few of them have ever contributed anything. Far fewer still are those rare individuals that are actually capable of creating good software, and willing to do it for no salary. Maybe a handful out of the millions with Slashdot accounts.
Look at the holy war over Ubuntu - most value the old KDE UI - a Windows rip-off. The new Unity UI us an OSX copy and most users don't like it. After 20 years there's still no good original Linux UI. If the OS UI isn't even good, what chance the apps will be good?
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He's right, though. The worst presents (software or otherwise) are those that seek to impose your views on how things should be done on others.
Second worst is a fruit cake.
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Yeah, there's a great suggestion. Give them Ubuntu, so they can try out Unity, see what a piece of shit it is, and never look at Linux again.
Re:Bootable USB (Score:5, Funny)
In this context you might as well give them Chlamydia.
You get to keep the usb also!
I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated them. (Score:5, Interesting)
A few years ago, I gave my friends and family gifts like this. They each got a 256 MB USB stick with Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org and some other open source software I thought they might find useful. Well, they didn't appreciate it at all.
Right after getting it, one of my nieces threw it back at me, calling it useless, and then she called me a "nerd ass faggot". I found out later that her brothers deleted everything on theirs without even bothering to try them.
My older relatives had no idea at all what they were. Some of them thought they were supposed to put them on their keychains, as decorations!
I'm not sure who, but some of my relatives didn't even bother to bring them home with them after they left the Christmas gathering. I found several of them lying on the floor after everyone had left for the night.
I hoped it would be a learning experience for them, but it was really a learning experience for me. Most people don't give a fuck about open source software. They just don't care. And they surely don't want to receive it as a gift.
Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the (Score:5, Funny)
*Anonymous bro hug*.
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Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the (Score:5, Insightful)
"nerd ass faggot"
you have a family of cunts.
Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the (Score:5, Funny)
You don't get to choose your family.
But you do get to choose which ones live :D
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Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the (Score:5, Funny)
next year... malware
Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why you give them on CDs or not at all.
And really, this is a pretty self serving gift so it's probably best not given at all.
Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the (Score:5, Interesting)
*Slightly* off topic, but let's face it: you'd do something like that because, deep down inside (if nothing else), you're hoping they'll fire up the software on that USB stick and say, "wow! And it's free??? Gimme some more o' dis!"
If you're trying to spread the news about Free Software, the only effective way to do it is to SHOW them. Most of the people whom I've converted to Linux did so after watching me use KDE (formerly) and Gnome (more recently). The multiple desktops are absolutely intriguing to a power user; it won't be long before he/she starts thinking, "hmmm ... I could use that." The fact that you're not playing "whack-a-mole" with a dozen pop ups each time you boot is impressive, too, as is the fact that, with a good distro, updates are centralized, controlled and politely done, with rarely a need to reboot.
Of course, I go one step further. If they want to see Windows, I've installed Windows in a Virtual Box. I can bring up Windows as a nice, well-behaved little application one one of my multiple desktops, where it stays out of the way until I really want or need it ..... the way it SHOULD BE. (Evil. Grin.)
Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the (Score:5, Insightful)
Your problem is that this is a selfish, smug, self-serving, "gift." It's the nerd equivalent of giving your Baptist neighbors copies of the Quran for Christmas in the hopes that they'll find it to be a learning experience. It's not a gift so much as an attempt to propagate your own ideological beliefs onto others in the way requiring the least actual pedagogy on your part. It's like asking your teacher how to spell a word, and they crassly tell you to look it up in the dictionary. Only worse. Your family aren't even asking. You're just giving them the dictionary and expecting them to have fun looking up words.
Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that the analogy was very apt. Your response to this is exactly the same as the religious zealots who get genuinely suprised when people don't react well to their helpful teachings. "But surely everyone wants to know they are loved by God!"
Like it or not, open source software is as much a philosophy as it is a collection of useful software. It certainly feels to the recipient like you are proselytising even if it seems to the giver as providing useful software. Then you have the big problem for ordinary people that giving away free software as presents is like coming in with plastic bags full of air.
Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not load a bunch of old family photos that they may not have.
Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the (Score:5, Funny)
Right after getting it, one of my nieces threw it back at me, calling it useless, and then she called me a "nerd ass faggot".
Wait, wait, wait...
Did your niece call you a "nerd-ass faggot"... or a "nerd ass-faggot", because the hyphen really changes the dynamics of the entire story :)
http://xkcd.com/37/ [xkcd.com]
Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the (Score:5, Insightful)
A few years ago, I gave my friends and family gifts like this. They each got a 256 MB USB stick with Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org and some other open source software I thought they might find useful. Well, they didn't appreciate it at all.
Right after getting it, one of my nieces threw it back at me, calling it useless, and then she called me a "nerd ass faggot". I found out later that her brothers deleted everything on theirs without even bothering to try them.
My older relatives had no idea at all what they were. Some of them thought they were supposed to put them on their keychains, as decorations!
I'm not sure who, but some of my relatives didn't even bother to bring them home with them after they left the Christmas gathering. I found several of them lying on the floor after everyone had left for the night.
I hoped it would be a learning experience for them, but it was really a learning experience for me. Most people don't give a fuck about open source software. They just don't care. And they surely don't want to receive it as a gift.
the problem is you were trying to give a gift that you liked, not one they liked.
Any normal person would see this. We don't.
This is how far slashdot is disconnected from the real world.
Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think I believe him either; the general gist of the story sounds plausible, but the details make it seem fabricated, especially the bit about the "nerd ass faggot", people leaving them lying on the floor, etc. Unless this guy comes from an incredibly rude family, most people are polite enough to accept gifts as-is, and if they don't like them keep their mouth shut and dispose of the gift later. One kid not being polite is certainly believable (kids haven't learned all their manners yet), but multiple adults? Doubtful. Moreover, he didn't say what year this was, but I'd assume that at that time, 256MB USB drives were considered decently large. If someone gave me a 2GB USB drive (today considered fairly small) loaded with pirated Windows software, for instance, even though I have no use for Windows software I'd still take the USB drive and just erase it and use it for my own purposes. You can never have too many of those things.
Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, that's weird. I guess good manners and politeness are just a thing of the past for America now.
As for the wine, I'd be perfectly happy with cheaper wine. I've tried many cheap and expensive wines, and have found an inverse relationship between the cost and how much I like it. I guess I don't have enough of an "acquired taste". :-P
Re:I gave gifts like this once. Everyone hated the (Score:4, Interesting)
wine: Something that appreciates in value as your willingness to say "Oh, now that's interesting!" increases.
Re: (Score:3)
Wow, that's weird. I guess good manners and politeness are just a thing of the past for America now.
Not all of America, but, yes, there are some exceptionally rude pockets here and there.
Re: (Score:3)
First off, your relatives suck for not even having the common decency of feigning appreciation. Second, this was a learning experience. I was planning on doing this same thing this year for Christmas. Now it's off to buy giftcards: something I hate doing.
I refuse to buy gift cards. Fuck that. If they want a gift card I'll give them cash with one I printed myself and a suggestion on where they MIGHT use it if they so choose. Do you have any idea how many of those things end up not being used before they expire!? And how many more because companies file for bankruptcy or get bought out. Fuck that shit. Giving the gift of becoming an unsecured creditor I may as well flush the money.
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And everyone hates receiving... You've spent $20 to give them $20, but you've tied their hands about where they can spend it. There's nothing more infuriating than a giftcard for a store which doesn't sell anything you want.
(upshot: give cash)
I don't have that many relatives left, but they know that an Amazon.com gift card is always appreciated by me, so that's what I usually get. Frankly, that's probably the perfect gift for me.
Re:Pathetic (Score:5)
If giving a cheap flash drive full of crap is your idea of a nice Christmas gift, then the best gift you can give to your family and friends is dying.
He did say stocking stuffer. I don't know about your family but when I was growing up sometimes our stocking stuffers weren't worth nearly the cost of a flash drive. They'd often be filled with candy or small yo-yo-like toys. I think a flash drive is perfectly in line with that.
On the other hand, if you are of the habit of sending out $100 bills as stocking stuffers, I'll happily send you my mailing address and you can send some of your extra money to me.
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And really free is still too expensive. Considering how much time I spend showing people how to use the broken interface they ought to be paying me to work around their poorly thought out ribbon crap.
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You're missing the point, the flash drive is the gift. The pre-loaded software is just a bonus.
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So how do you sanitize the media you BUY for yourself?
Re:Not flash drives or free software (Score:4, Funny)
What child wouldn't want a copy of 7-Zip for Christmas? You'd be the coolest uncle in the world!
For their birthday you could get them pngcrush! And maybe, for a treat, you could include an update for the Windows PCI device driver.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1) It's the thought and effort that counts
2) It's a fucking stocking stuffer, not the "big gift from santa"