Slashdot Mirror
Carmack: Lord of the Games
seer writes: "This article on Red Herring is a nice look at the interworkings of id software, most specifically their famous employee John Carmack. It delves deeply into the fact that id has stayed a very small company and dabbles with other topics such as Carmack's tendency to stay away from Microsoft 'standards' and the whole DooM ]I[ debacle. An interesting read."
his girlfriend has nice fake tits. oh wait isn't that the other id guy? which is which? i dunno anymore...
farp!
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I think Linux is a great thing, because Linux is an alternative to Windows, and because, of all the operating systems that are at all relevant today, Unix is the best of a bad lot.
(Yes, that's right, though I've been living in Unix for more than a decade, I think Unix sucks. Read the "Unix Hater's Handbook" if you want to know why. But I'd rather run Unix than Windows or MacOS any day, because Unix sucks less. That doesn't mean it doesn't suck.)
I used Linux exclusively for most of 1995 and 1996, or thereabouts; back then, I found it to be a total nightmare. It took me three weeks to get X to drive my monitor at better than 640x400, even though Windows did 1280x1024x16 without flinching. I spent weeks fighting IRQ conflicts, trying to get PPP working, trying to find a three-button mouse that worked, and all manner of gross indecencies which do not bear mentioning in polite company.
I understand that here in this modern world, things are much better; but at the time, it was the most pathetic computing environment I had ever had the misfortune of being shanghaied into trying to sysadmin.
(And the fact that some of the problems I had were hardware problems did little to make me feel better; regardless, they were problems that were easier to solve under Windows, and problems that I would not have had at all had I been using a hardware/software combo from a ``real'' Unix vendor. I've heard all the apologies and excuses, I know the litany well.)
See, unlike most hackers, I get little joy out of figuring out how to install the latest toy. I don't get much sense of reward from having discovered how to get the Foo card to coexist with the Bar card. As far as I'm concerned, that crap is a solved problem, and not worth revisiting. That's like banging rocks together and being proud that you've re-derived fire from first principles. It's boring.
So finally I talked my boss into getting me an SGI Indy (which I've since replaced with an SGI O2) and life became joyous again. Because SGI actually knows something about building user interfaces, and about making it possible to administer a machine without being a member of the technological priesthood. For but one example, I was able to install and format a new disk on this machine through GUIs, without once having to run ``man'' and try to remember some random arcane command that I last used in 1986.
This is the part where I start getting hate mail from people, and cheerleading messages telling me to take a look at it again, because it's so much better now. I understand. I'll take your word for it. And when the time comes to replace the O2 I have today, maybe my next machine will run Linux. But as we all know, Linux is only free if your time has no value, and I find that my time is better spent doing things other than the endless moving-target-upgrade dance.
Of course, all of the software I write runs on Linux; that's the beauty of standards, and of cross-platform code. I don't have to run your OS, and you don't have to run mine, and we can use the same applications anyway!
I think Linux is a great thing, in the big picture. It's a great hacker's tool, and it has a lot of potential to become something more. I hope that some day it will have evolved to the point where my mom can take home a Linux box, turn it on, and get on with her life without having to become a Unix sysadmin first, and without having to give up on all the ease of use she's come to expect from allegedly less powerful operating systems.
Because, you see, what I want to do is to commoditize the OS. I want to have access to all the applications that I need to do the things that I need to do, regardless. Why should someone have to retrain themselves to use a new application that does the same basic thing as the old application, just because something as trivial as the operating system changed out from under them?
Operating systems matter deeply to programmers, but in the big picture, they're old news. It's all about the network, and the applications that let you get benefit from the network. Using a computer isn't an end in itself, it's merely a means to an end. The focus must always be on the task that the person wants to accomplish, to communicate, to learn, to create, to be entertained. Insofar as the computer itself makes itself known in this process, the computer is an impediment. Do What I Mean! Be humanistic, don't get bogged down in the details.
...since the eighties? I seem to recall that he has not, but I could be mistaken.
I'm the stranger...posting to
ID Software is as strong as ever, and so is John Carmack. Thank you for everything, John!
For the ones that want to know more about John, here are some links:
John's .plan
John's biography @ ID Software
John Carmack Answers @ Slashdot
John Carmack was found dead in his Portland, Oregon home. Authorities have yet to release any details of the investigation, but sources say it appears to be from natural causes. Three of his Ferraris were found missing from his hangar.
I am missing a moderating option for "+1 Pathetic".
I just inherited 20 thousand dollars and I live in my parents basement :)
Anyway, I'm looking to buy a new system, but I'm torn; Should I buy an SGI workstation or a Sun UltraSPARC2? Can I run Linux on either and how well?
I only drink tequila.
I am here to annonce that I have found out I am a homosexual... I love COCK!
While at a public swimming pool, I got a hard on when looking at young boys coming out of the pool with their tight shorts sticking against their bodies.
Please stop replying to the troll Omerna. If we learned nothing from the recent Voyager episode it's that annoying people go away if you ignore them, and Q has a foot fetish.
I think instead of moderating these kinds of posts as "-1 Offtopic", we should have a "-1 What a Dick" option.
Patroits stuck an ICBM up their asses. They squealed like Osama bin Laden.
Mod me down. I don't freaking care right now.
PS2 showdown before this game had the Pats win this game. This also had the score pretty close to the real thing.
Nice IBM ad in the post-game show. Basketball player with the name Linux. Also a flash of Unix.
But I digress. Woohoo! Go Pats!
Private Pyle, I'm gonna give you three seconds, exactly three fuckin' seconds, to wipe that stupid lookin' grin off your face or I will gouge out your eyeballs and skull fuck you!
, I'm tired of having to work my way up my company's hierarchy with hard work. I'd rather just suck off the appropriate people and let the raises roll in.
if you suck my cock i'll give you a few Karma points...
I am a perl hacker, I spend at least 10 hours a day on the computer if not more, and I love playing Quake III. I also exercise 5 days a week religiously, because part of being a smart geek I think is knowing how to take care of yourself and know your body.
However, while I am athletic, I've never found a sport that involves men in tights pounding the shit out of each other and slapping each other's asses, (can you say homoerotic? not that I'm homophobic, but geez...jocks seem to be, and that seems ironic to me) with fans that apparently identify so strongly with teams that they will get in fights over it, appealing in the least.
I don't know, call me crazy.
Offtopic I know... But personaly I think the funniest thing Mr Gates has excreated was the famous quote "640kb will be enough for anyone"
~www.devnull.co.uk
Quit your fucking whining, jackass. This is why you have no friends. You take things way too seriously. Nobody likes you, so just go masturbate in your moms underwear drawer the way you always do.
I may try it.. I have been leery of adding anything to the Web browsing loop due to the perilous instability of my Win98 'recovery disk only' box from comically dysfunctional vendor Acer (e.g. I called them asking what the make and model of the built-in sound card was. After getting through to their US customer service department in Costa Rica, the nonnative English speaker at the end of the line told me 'I don't know. Sorry.' I finally found out by looking at third party sites on the Web..). At random intervals, Web browsing will cause the system to reboot itself.. Tried linux but no distributions supported the USB keyboard and mouse last time I checked (a while ago). Grr.
-1 troll. Cute. I guess the lesson to be learned here is: "Don't talk about the moderation. You will be smacked down."
Thanks for the great games.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on