And the "epic" is precisely why I stopped reading at book 4. Up to that point, you had the very good story of a bunch of small-town kids caught up in something bigger than they were. It was gritty and it was real. When Rand defeats a swordmaster with a blue heron blade in book four, then takes out one of the lesser deities in the same book, I instantly thought... gee, kinda tough to go UP from there, isn't it? He's only 20 or so.
I'm a fan of low fantasy, so the minute it spiraled up into "killing Gods" territory, which is what I call it, I instantly lost interest.
At some point, though, a product becomes so ubiquitous that it is no longer just a common good and has become a staple. At that point, living without it really does have social repercussions and, in the case of the Internet, we are rapidly reaching that point. How many paper resumes do you think get submitted in industrialized nations these days? If the choice was limited to getting raped by my telco and/or not having a job, that's not much of a choice is it?
are like fences. Build one and you may feel more comfortable and more secure in where your boundaries are, but someone is ALWAYS on the other side. The more ideals you have, the more fences you build and the further away from the "common man" you are.
For crying out loud... these are just device drivers. Is it going to kill everyone to just compromise? Axe the nv and nouveau projects and put those developers to work with nVidia on a global driver for their cards on Linux. Make it a closed-source driver that is sold, with half the proceeds going towards nVidia and half towards the Open Source community. Yes, form a partnership between the private concern and the public community, in other words, so that EVERYONE profits. I would gladly pay as much as $20 for a known-good nVidia driver that would allow me to take full advantage of the card's capabilities. Heck, many would pay five times that.
Some things are worth going to the mat over... but device drivers just ain't it.
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And the "epic" is precisely why I stopped reading at book 4. Up to that point, you had the very good story of a bunch of small-town kids caught up in something bigger than they were. It was gritty and it was real. When Rand defeats a swordmaster with a blue heron blade in book four, then takes out one of the lesser deities in the same book, I instantly thought ... gee, kinda tough to go UP from there, isn't it? He's only 20 or so.
I'm a fan of low fantasy, so the minute it spiraled up into "killing Gods" territory, which is what I call it, I instantly lost interest.
At some point, though, a product becomes so ubiquitous that it is no longer just a common good and has become a staple. At that point, living without it really does have social repercussions and, in the case of the Internet, we are rapidly reaching that point. How many paper resumes do you think get submitted in industrialized nations these days? If the choice was limited to getting raped by my telco and/or not having a job, that's not much of a choice is it?
For crying out loud ... these are just device drivers. Is it going to kill everyone to just compromise? Axe the nv and nouveau projects and put those developers to work with nVidia on a global driver for their cards on Linux. Make it a closed-source driver that is sold, with half the proceeds going towards nVidia and half towards the Open Source community. Yes, form a partnership between the private concern and the public community, in other words, so that EVERYONE profits. I would gladly pay as much as $20 for a known-good nVidia driver that would allow me to take full advantage of the card's capabilities. Heck, many would pay five times that.
Some things are worth going to the mat over ... but device drivers just ain't it.