In the RMS biography "Free as in Freedom" by Sam Williams, the point is made that Stallman views the legal system as just another system to be hacked upon. There is a complex set of rules to follow, and with a clever, well-made program (e.g. the GPL) you can achieve things people hadn't even thought were possible.
Using the patent system against itself and against Microsoft seems to me to be at least a similar idea, if not the same thing.
Man, I've got the Law & Order blues...I want to hear the judges' decision NOW! If Jack McCoy had argued this case, instead of Lessig, I'm sure the Supes would be back in like 30 minutes with their decision.;^)
Ah well. At least cable is showing L&O every hour on the hour nowadays, so I can get home and get a fix then. GET 'EM JACK!:^D
There was a recent discussion on the mailing list about using a very common boot floppy. The friend I have that recently installed Gentoo went this route because he too didn't have a CD-ROM drive. Check the mailing list archives for the past 30 days. I suspect it was in gentoo-user or gentoo-dev.
Re:Read the comments under the announcement...
on
Lunar Linux 1.0 Released
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I recommend Gentoo for people who want to be closer to the internals of their systems but don't want the "gasoline poured into gaping head wound" pain of Linux From Scratch. LFS is great for doing once for the experience, but since it pretty much lacks a packaging system (back when I tried it), it's not for me. I'm willing to do some babysitting of my system, but not at the level that LFS requires.
Gentoo promises a close working relationship with your system, access to the very latest packages, and a growing and generally helpful community.
Well, by struggle I mean two things: - get my laptop's PCMCIA to play nice with their ISO image - get their kernel to work without having SMP turned on
This is back from the 1.0_rc6 days, and rc6 worked just great with my system. Unfortunately, the way they had their kernel set up, you had to do a "make clean" right off the bat or you got something that didn't work quite right unless you left SMP turned on. Don't ask me why...that's just how it was.
Furthermore, when they went to 1.0 (final) it wasn't clear to me that an upgrade would be a clean process. So I instead chose to install again, and their 1.0 ISO would cause a really nasty kernel hang when trying to enable PCMCIA on my laptop.
From there I used my 1.0_rc6 disc to get the system half-working and then used the 1.0 final disc to finish everything up. I know it sounds odd, but it worked, and everything has been smooth since.
Then there were a few compile problems, probably related to me using the gcc 3.x profile, but I worked around those too.
Struggle may sound harsh, but that's how it feels when you're getting what look like serious problems and the help online isn't helpful enough.
Note: Gentoo devs and mailing lists have seemed generally helpful, from what I've experienced, but I don't think they were nearly as helpful in March 2002 as they are now.
In case people read this and not my other followup, yes, I'm positive about Gentoo.
Read the comments under the announcement...
on
Lunar Linux 1.0 Released
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
First there were the distro wars.
Now there are the source distro wars.:^)
Anyway, I thought this was a humourous comment under the announcement on the Lunar site that indicates just how far out of the mainstream source distro geeks are:
Actually, lunar requires very little documentation to install. If you actually went through the install process you should see that. Also, the initial MOTD tells you to read a manpage that describes the features and commands to a first time user.
Oh! I get it. First I burn the ISO and then boot and that gets to the MOTD. Then it points me to a man page which details lots of little command line programs that I use to install. That's gotta be the ultimate in user friendly!:^D
Sorry, but it just made me laugh out loud when I read how easy [sic] it was. For what it's worth, I struggled through several Gentoo installs and, except at work where we have system administered by someone else, I use Gentoo and love it. Even "converted" one of my friends recently. I know what it's like to have to do obscure things, but sometimes it takes a comment like the above to realize just how "deep" I've fallen into the world of Linux geekdom.
The bills also would amend a 1998 law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that makes it a crime to circumvent technological protections built in to copyrighted works. Instead, consumers would be allowed to bypass the technology if the intent is to make a copy for personal use.
That's not good enough. Hopefully they really will admend it to allow for other uses, like using bits of data acquired and used (fairly) in published works, like critical articles or scientific papers. If we're going to amend the DMCA, let's go ahead and get more of it, I say.
Then again, if too many legislators are going to balk, then I'll take as much as we can get passed. Getting the law off the books this way would be even better than having to deal with the Supes striking it down.
I'm teaching a scientific computing (numerical analysis and programming) course at Duke right now, and I just sent links to a couple of these courses out to my students. Specifically Numerical Methods in Chemical Engineering and Linear Algebra. The former contains some good stuff, including a Matlab tutorial. The latter has Java demos including one showing an idea that I've already has a homework on (SVD). My class is already "paperless", in that the homeworks are all posted online and submitted electronically over email and grades are sent in the form of detailed reports for each student's submitted work. This fits right in with this online-only system.
Pushing Linux desktop evolution
on
Red Hat 8.0 Reviewed
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· Score: 5, Insightful
One of the biggest problems I have with the current UI is the inconsistent, confusing and bloated "Start" Red Hat menu. You are free to like it as much as you want, I just don't. What is the point of having similar menus all over the place? You have a "mouse" entry on your Preferences, and you got a "mouse" entry on your System Settings. Granted, the panels loading from each menu are doing different things, but it is just not clear enough just by looking at the menu items what is what and which one does what. You have to click both to see if it is the one you needed. A UI should be intuitive enough to clear up such misconceptions right away.
Wouldn't it be nice if developers in the free software community read things like this and took the criticisms to heart as seriously as if someone had knocked them for not using a free license? That is, the community has some peer pressure for acceptable software: using a free software license (GPL, LGPL, BSD), sharing code but with appropriate attribution, using open standards and tools (autoconf, etc), and so on. The openness of the community and this system of taboos have arguable produced better software and certainly gotten us closer to a free software world. Could the same pressure potentially lead free software application developers to enforce good GUI design habits as well as good programming habits? When users give feedback like the above that says "hey, your program may be cool, but you aren't following good UI design principles" and this criticism carrys weight similar to telling someone that they should use a free software license, then perhaps free software can really evolve past its geek-oriented roots to something that the masses can embrace.
Thanks for the virtual +1 Funny mod. I'm beginning to think I need to post gigantic ASCII art smileys for all the not-quite-with-it moderators around here.:^)
Or you could be a conspiracy theorist. Hey, the Microsoft Press Puppet (MSNBC) is using their connection with the public to encourage people to go get Linux computers when they know good and well that that very same public will be outraged when everything doesn't work as advertised. Then the backlash against using Linux on the desktop sets us back another 5 years from getting a measly 1% of the desktop market, by which time we've all had our federally mandated Microsoft borg implants sent to us along with our tax forms.
Although they're not always "easy to set up", they might be decent examples of what can be done. The ones I've included on a CD of free software for friends include:
I think the obvious next move is for Microsoft to buy Sega. Their own developers have some ok sports games, but Sega would buy them some real sports clout along with some younger generation appeal that they could use to balance their library of titles.
Just think, if they could claim exclusive rights to Sega's line of sports games, including NFL, NBA, NHL, baseball, tennis, and college football lines. They could be the premiere sports games for the Xbox Live online service, for example. And a Virtua Fighter would put Xbox squarely in the sights of many fighting game fans, since then DoA, VF, and Soul Calibur would all be available on one system. Add online opponents and tourneys, and they could potentially hand out more hats of money. Then with Sonic and those cute little Super Monkey Balls, they'd have a possible in with children and youngsters that aren't necessarily into the older games. Make all of these exclusives, and the Xbox looks a whole lot better of an investment.
You know they've thought about it, and now we know the stakes: $3.75e8 dollars for someone like Rare that doesn't have the rep or the library of Sega. Sega's gotta be worth what...twice that...in franchises and development talent alone.
While we're talking numbers, how many units of games does Rare have to sell to be worth it to MicroSoft? Or, perhaps more importantly, how many monthly online subscriptions? And how long is it going to take them to pay it off, given that they're going to incur more costs, in terms of development and promotion, just to get a game out the door?
The usual disclaimer: I'm not an Xbox or MS fan. Read my blog and you'll see where my interests lie. I'm just commenting on the situation as I see it...
Back in the early days of telecomputing, there were outfits like The Source, CompuServe, Genie, and the like. Those that survived realized that their users really wanted to get in touch with each other. Maybe they started out serving informaton, but either they wound up serving connectivity, or they died. Just about the entire industry seems to have forgotten that lesson, and is trying its hardest to turn the Internet from connectivity into information. *Their* information, for a price, preferably paid *every* time. Precisely the model that failed decades before.
I really like this point. I'm not sure how accurate it is, to be honest, since I wasn't familiar with those older services, but it is true that user-oriented BBSes did seem to play a big role in the advent of what you're calling connectivity (to other users). I think I'd say it as "The true value of the network lies in connecting users to each other, not connecting users to centralized media distributorrs." Of course, value for the user apparently isn't value for the big conglomerates, eh?
In a larger view, one could say that this is why USENET persists to this day, despite the heavy binary groups load. There really are lots of thriving newsgroups that continue to pull in new readers and writers.
Not enough quality digital entertainment, like movies and TV shows, are being offered over broadband connections to make them worth it to normal users.
For example, when I've tried to find good movies to watch on my computer, most of the time the very newest movies that movie companies are making available are not worth the download. They usually look like someone sat in a theater with a video camera and taped it by hand, which I admit is capturing the experience of going to a real movie, but just isn't what I'm expecting when I can go down to the Blockbuster and get older movies on DVD that have sharper picture and much better sound. Some of the older movies I've found online are very clear, but then they look identical to what I can rent (or buy) at local stores, so the download seems kind of a waste of time. Not to mention that some parts of the movie files aren't always there, and I end up requesting "fills".
And the advertisements that I see in the download area where I get the movies are usually not the kinds of things I'm interested in. I'm not really sure that they should be putting those kinds of adverts right beside, say, the latest Harry Potter film download. Barnyard stuff just isn't my cup of tea, if you get my drift.
I don't know what kind of company this USENET outfit is, but the movie companies should ditch them ASAP and get a real online movie distribution system.
Gotta disagree. Doom 3 will push your system exponentially harder than UT2k3, and guess what? It'll run natively on linux with any video card you care to use.
Ha. Haha. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Whew. That was a good one. For a minute there I thought you were serious. Like you meant that it would run on a Voodoo3 or something, using DRI drivers, or something equally absurd.
I have to admit, you have a way with contradictions, though. "It will push your system exponentially harder than UT2k3" and "it'll run natively on linux with any video card you care to use"...brilliant. It's like you're holding "tea" and "no tea" in your inventory at the same time.
Ok, here's my experience with disc-based consoles. I've had a Sony PSX (original model, bought new, but not at launch), a Sega Saturn (older model, bought used), and Sony PS2 (bought at launch).
PSX - Had some skipping problems, but I could count the number of incidents on one hand. Those experiences were never such that a game became unplayable.
Saturn - Like a rock. No problems ever.
PS2 - Like a rock. No problems ever.
I use my consoles a pretty fair amount, although I'm sure I'm not nearly as heavy a user as some. I do make sure that I keep my consoles well-ventilated, which means not sitting flat on carpet and not inside of an entertainment center cubbyhole. Hard flat surface, with room for air to flow all around it. That's about all the work I've done to protect them.
And, my consoles haven't ever been sitting in the same place all the time. I take them over to friends' homes when we get together for a gaming night. I've carried them to my parents' home (3 hour road trip) and my parents-in-law's home (9 hour road trip), always using a padded console carrying case. Even with that kind of travel, no problems whatsoever.
Here. ATI and PowerVR will all have S3TC enabled, UT2003-playing drivers soonish, I believe. NVIDIA and XiG already do. No word on Matrox, using any drivers. And no final word on DRI.
Comparing UT2003 to RtCW is really poor. UT2003 really is pushing the system much harder than RtCW, simply in terms of the textures, polygons, and physics. To get the performance they needed for the textures they're using, Epic needed to use some texture compression and they chose the standard that's available by every major Windows drivers, S3TC/DXTC. This is available in NVIDIA's drivers, XiG's drivers, and PowerVR's drivers (although there are other issues with the PowerVR drivers). All of these already have a license for S3TC/DXTC in their Windows drivers and therefore can implement that in their closed Linux drivers.
The DRI drivers, on the other hand, are by their nature open and getting a license is a much trickier proposition. Steps have been taken to work with the patent holders to get a license for an open implementation in DRI, and some of those steps are being taken by Daniel Vogel of Epic (see DRI mailing list in past two days for an email from Brian Paul about this). So even though the DRI drivers are currently crippled and unable to use the required technology, Epic hasn't given up and has been working to help the DRI team get what they need to support UT2003.
Yes, only closed drivers currently work. The open solution is trying to move forward in a legal manner. Yet S3TC/DXTC is required because there isn't another solution. Epic is trying to help.
Getting bent out of shape and spewing ill-informed vitriol as if they were all conspiring to screw you isn't going to help the situation.
It's my impression that user bitching didn't have much to do with it. Epic has one person, Daniel Vogel, that is interested in seeing some Linux support and he contacted a notable Linux game coder, Ryan Gordon, about getting the client work done on Linux. My experience has been that Epic isn't nearly so pro-free-software as say Carmack but they do have a view of the world that isn't completely Windows-centric. Mostly Windows-centric? Of course...that's where a good portion of their profit sits, along with console ports, like the Xbox Unreal game slated for this winter and Unreal Tournament for PS2 at the launch of that console. But the recent comment by Mark Rein of Epic saying, in effect, "if we have a server port, we should also do a client port" is probably indicative of the positive attitude that Epic currently has about ports for other systems. And they haven't forgotten the Mac, and a port will be coming along for that platform as well. Epic wants everyone to buy the game and they've taken steps to make sure that every major platform has a port for people to buy.
The community helping out and being supportive is probably more likely to get things to happen, rather than bitching.
You can read a little more about how the UT2003 client came to be at LinuxGames.
I would presume that a good browser would check the DOCTYPE or something and adjust accordingly. If the page was XHTML 2.0 then the browser ignores deprecated tags...
But your question makes me think that we will probably end up with page composers writing a mish-mash of old and new code and the browsers being left to sort it all out.
Perhaps what we need is something like HTML 4 Transitional which has features of both HTML 4 and XHTML 1?
Here at Duke, the school newspaper The Chronicle ran a recent story about the effect of the Patriot act on librarians. I hope that word becomes more widespread about the effect of this passed-in-the-heat-of-the-moment legislation, so that we can get it off the books as soon as possible.
The comparison between what Sun is doing and the monopolistic behaviour of Microsoft is unfair.
Microsoft using its desktop dominance to put IE in front of users before they have a chance to get Netscape is using dominance in one market to gain dominance in another. That's when a company uses a monopoly in a criminal manner.
Sun, on the other hand, is trying to gain share in a market where they have no leverage other than their product and the price they're willing to sell it at. They aren't leveraging their hardware products (AFAICT) to get people to use Star Office. They aren't using Solaris to push Star Office onto these companies. They are doing what any non-monopoly company would do when entering a new market: offering their products at a very low price (here, free) to encourage users to switch. The pay-off comes far, far down the line when Star Office (potentially) becomes a real player in the field of office software.
In short: Microsoft leverages OS dominance to gain browser dominance. Sun uses low price to gain a foothold in office productivity market. Not the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
In the RMS biography "Free as in Freedom" by Sam Williams, the point is made that Stallman views the legal system as just another system to be hacked upon. There is a complex set of rules to follow, and with a clever, well-made program (e.g. the GPL) you can achieve things people hadn't even thought were possible.
Using the patent system against itself and against Microsoft seems to me to be at least a similar idea, if not the same thing.
Man, I've got the Law & Order blues...I want to hear the judges' decision NOW! If Jack McCoy had argued this case, instead of Lessig, I'm sure the Supes would be back in like 30 minutes with their decision. ;^)
:^D
Ah well. At least cable is showing L&O every hour on the hour nowadays, so I can get home and get a fix then. GET 'EM JACK!
There was a recent discussion on the mailing list about using a very common boot floppy. The friend I have that recently installed Gentoo went this route because he too didn't have a CD-ROM drive. Check the mailing list archives for the past 30 days. I suspect it was in gentoo-user or gentoo-dev.
I recommend Gentoo for people who want to be closer to the internals of their systems but don't want the "gasoline poured into gaping head wound" pain of Linux From Scratch. LFS is great for doing once for the experience, but since it pretty much lacks a packaging system (back when I tried it), it's not for me. I'm willing to do some babysitting of my system, but not at the level that LFS requires.
Gentoo promises a close working relationship with your system, access to the very latest packages, and a growing and generally helpful community.
Try it out: Gentoo home
See my other post in this thread for why I had problems with it initially.
Well, by struggle I mean two things:
- get my laptop's PCMCIA to play nice with their ISO image
- get their kernel to work without having SMP turned on
This is back from the 1.0_rc6 days, and rc6 worked just great with my system. Unfortunately, the way they had their kernel set up, you had to do a "make clean" right off the bat or you got something that didn't work quite right unless you left SMP turned on. Don't ask me why...that's just how it was.
Furthermore, when they went to 1.0 (final) it wasn't clear to me that an upgrade would be a clean process. So I instead chose to install again, and their 1.0 ISO would cause a really nasty kernel hang when trying to enable PCMCIA on my laptop.
From there I used my 1.0_rc6 disc to get the system half-working and then used the 1.0 final disc to finish everything up. I know it sounds odd, but it worked, and everything has been smooth since.
Then there were a few compile problems, probably related to me using the gcc 3.x profile, but I worked around those too.
Struggle may sound harsh, but that's how it feels when you're getting what look like serious problems and the help online isn't helpful enough.
Note: Gentoo devs and mailing lists have seemed generally helpful, from what I've experienced, but I don't think they were nearly as helpful in March 2002 as they are now.
In case people read this and not my other followup, yes, I'm positive about Gentoo.
Now there are the source distro wars.
Anyway, I thought this was a humourous comment under the announcement on the Lunar site that indicates just how far out of the mainstream source distro geeks are:
Oh! I get it. First I burn the ISO and then boot and that gets to the MOTD. Then it points me to a man page which details lots of little command line programs that I use to install. That's gotta be the ultimate in user friendly!
Sorry, but it just made me laugh out loud when I read how easy [sic] it was. For what it's worth, I struggled through several Gentoo installs and, except at work where we have system administered by someone else, I use Gentoo and love it. Even "converted" one of my friends recently. I know what it's like to have to do obscure things, but sometimes it takes a comment like the above to realize just how "deep" I've fallen into the world of Linux geekdom.
That's not good enough. Hopefully they really will admend it to allow for other uses, like using bits of data acquired and used (fairly) in published works, like critical articles or scientific papers. If we're going to amend the DMCA, let's go ahead and get more of it, I say.
Then again, if too many legislators are going to balk, then I'll take as much as we can get passed. Getting the law off the books this way would be even better than having to deal with the Supes striking it down.
I'm teaching a scientific computing (numerical analysis and programming) course at Duke right now, and I just sent links to a couple of these courses out to my students. Specifically Numerical Methods in Chemical Engineering and Linear Algebra. The former contains some good stuff, including a Matlab tutorial. The latter has Java demos including one showing an idea that I've already has a homework on (SVD). My class is already "paperless", in that the homeworks are all posted online and submitted electronically over email and grades are sent in the form of detailed reports for each student's submitted work. This fits right in with this online-only system.
Wouldn't it be nice if developers in the free software community read things like this and took the criticisms to heart as seriously as if someone had knocked them for not using a free license? That is, the community has some peer pressure for acceptable software: using a free software license (GPL, LGPL, BSD), sharing code but with appropriate attribution, using open standards and tools (autoconf, etc), and so on. The openness of the community and this system of taboos have arguable produced better software and certainly gotten us closer to a free software world. Could the same pressure potentially lead free software application developers to enforce good GUI design habits as well as good programming habits? When users give feedback like the above that says "hey, your program may be cool, but you aren't following good UI design principles" and this criticism carrys weight similar to telling someone that they should use a free software license, then perhaps free software can really evolve past its geek-oriented roots to something that the masses can embrace.
Thanks for the virtual +1 Funny mod. I'm beginning to think I need to post gigantic ASCII art smileys for all the not-quite-with-it moderators around here. :^)
Or you could be a conspiracy theorist. Hey, the Microsoft Press Puppet (MSNBC) is using their connection with the public to encourage people to go get Linux computers when they know good and well that that very same public will be outraged when everything doesn't work as advertised. Then the backlash against using Linux on the desktop sets us back another 5 years from getting a measly 1% of the desktop market, by which time we've all had our federally mandated Microsoft borg implants sent to us along with our tax forms.
:^)
Hey, it could happen!
I hope to get around to playing NetHack someday, but I just can't stop playing Angband long enough to set it up!
I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting, but that's a good start. Hopefully other posters will list their faves...
Sorry, but when someone mentions bees and dogs, I can't help but think of that quote from Homer.
I think the obvious next move is for Microsoft to buy Sega. Their own developers have some ok sports games, but Sega would buy them some real sports clout along with some younger generation appeal that they could use to balance their library of titles.
Just think, if they could claim exclusive rights to Sega's line of sports games, including NFL, NBA, NHL, baseball, tennis, and college football lines. They could be the premiere sports games for the Xbox Live online service, for example. And a Virtua Fighter would put Xbox squarely in the sights of many fighting game fans, since then DoA, VF, and Soul Calibur would all be available on one system. Add online opponents and tourneys, and they could potentially hand out more hats of money. Then with Sonic and those cute little Super Monkey Balls, they'd have a possible in with children and youngsters that aren't necessarily into the older games. Make all of these exclusives, and the Xbox looks a whole lot better of an investment.
You know they've thought about it, and now we know the stakes: $3.75e8 dollars for someone like Rare that doesn't have the rep or the library of Sega. Sega's gotta be worth what...twice that...in franchises and development talent alone.
While we're talking numbers, how many units of games does Rare have to sell to be worth it to MicroSoft? Or, perhaps more importantly, how many monthly online subscriptions? And how long is it going to take them to pay it off, given that they're going to incur more costs, in terms of development and promotion, just to get a game out the door?
The usual disclaimer: I'm not an Xbox or MS fan. Read my blog and you'll see where my interests lie. I'm just commenting on the situation as I see it...
I really like this point. I'm not sure how accurate it is, to be honest, since I wasn't familiar with those older services, but it is true that user-oriented BBSes did seem to play a big role in the advent of what you're calling connectivity (to other users). I think I'd say it as "The true value of the network lies in connecting users to each other, not connecting users to centralized media distributorrs." Of course, value for the user apparently isn't value for the big conglomerates, eh?
In a larger view, one could say that this is why USENET persists to this day, despite the heavy binary groups load. There really are lots of thriving newsgroups that continue to pull in new readers and writers.
Not enough quality digital entertainment, like movies and TV shows, are being offered over broadband connections to make them worth it to normal users.
For example, when I've tried to find good movies to watch on my computer, most of the time the very newest movies that movie companies are making available are not worth the download. They usually look like someone sat in a theater with a video camera and taped it by hand, which I admit is capturing the experience of going to a real movie, but just isn't what I'm expecting when I can go down to the Blockbuster and get older movies on DVD that have sharper picture and much better sound. Some of the older movies I've found online are very clear, but then they look identical to what I can rent (or buy) at local stores, so the download seems kind of a waste of time. Not to mention that some parts of the movie files aren't always there, and I end up requesting "fills".
And the advertisements that I see in the download area where I get the movies are usually not the kinds of things I'm interested in. I'm not really sure that they should be putting those kinds of adverts right beside, say, the latest Harry Potter film download. Barnyard stuff just isn't my cup of tea, if you get my drift.
I don't know what kind of company this USENET outfit is, but the movie companies should ditch them ASAP and get a real online movie distribution system.
Ha. Haha. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Whew. That was a good one. For a minute there I thought you were serious. Like you meant that it would run on a Voodoo3 or something, using DRI drivers, or something equally absurd.
I have to admit, you have a way with contradictions, though. "It will push your system exponentially harder than UT2k3" and "it'll run natively on linux with any video card you care to use"...brilliant. It's like you're holding "tea" and "no tea" in your inventory at the same time.
Ok, here's my experience with disc-based consoles. I've had a Sony PSX (original model, bought new, but not at launch), a Sega Saturn (older model, bought used), and Sony PS2 (bought at launch).
PSX - Had some skipping problems, but I could count the number of incidents on one hand. Those experiences were never such that a game became unplayable.
Saturn - Like a rock. No problems ever.
PS2 - Like a rock. No problems ever.
I use my consoles a pretty fair amount, although I'm sure I'm not nearly as heavy a user as some. I do make sure that I keep my consoles well-ventilated, which means not sitting flat on carpet and not inside of an entertainment center cubbyhole. Hard flat surface, with room for air to flow all around it. That's about all the work I've done to protect them.
And, my consoles haven't ever been sitting in the same place all the time. I take them over to friends' homes when we get together for a gaming night. I've carried them to my parents' home (3 hour road trip) and my parents-in-law's home (9 hour road trip), always using a padded console carrying case. Even with that kind of travel, no problems whatsoever.
Just my experience. YMMV.
Here. ATI and PowerVR will all have S3TC enabled, UT2003-playing drivers soonish, I believe. NVIDIA and XiG already do. No word on Matrox, using any drivers. And no final word on DRI.
Comparing UT2003 to RtCW is really poor. UT2003 really is pushing the system much harder than RtCW, simply in terms of the textures, polygons, and physics. To get the performance they needed for the textures they're using, Epic needed to use some texture compression and they chose the standard that's available by every major Windows drivers, S3TC/DXTC. This is available in NVIDIA's drivers, XiG's drivers, and PowerVR's drivers (although there are other issues with the PowerVR drivers). All of these already have a license for S3TC/DXTC in their Windows drivers and therefore can implement that in their closed Linux drivers.
The DRI drivers, on the other hand, are by their nature open and getting a license is a much trickier proposition. Steps have been taken to work with the patent holders to get a license for an open implementation in DRI, and some of those steps are being taken by Daniel Vogel of Epic (see DRI mailing list in past two days for an email from Brian Paul about this). So even though the DRI drivers are currently crippled and unable to use the required technology, Epic hasn't given up and has been working to help the DRI team get what they need to support UT2003.
Yes, only closed drivers currently work. The open solution is trying to move forward in a legal manner. Yet S3TC/DXTC is required because there isn't another solution. Epic is trying to help.
Getting bent out of shape and spewing ill-informed vitriol as if they were all conspiring to screw you isn't going to help the situation.
It's my impression that user bitching didn't have much to do with it. Epic has one person, Daniel Vogel, that is interested in seeing some Linux support and he contacted a notable Linux game coder, Ryan Gordon, about getting the client work done on Linux. My experience has been that Epic isn't nearly so pro-free-software as say Carmack but they do have a view of the world that isn't completely Windows-centric. Mostly Windows-centric? Of course...that's where a good portion of their profit sits, along with console ports, like the Xbox Unreal game slated for this winter and Unreal Tournament for PS2 at the launch of that console. But the recent comment by Mark Rein of Epic saying, in effect, "if we have a server port, we should also do a client port" is probably indicative of the positive attitude that Epic currently has about ports for other systems. And they haven't forgotten the Mac, and a port will be coming along for that platform as well. Epic wants everyone to buy the game and they've taken steps to make sure that every major platform has a port for people to buy.
The community helping out and being supportive is probably more likely to get things to happen, rather than bitching.
You can read a little more about how the UT2003 client came to be at LinuxGames.
I would presume that a good browser would check the DOCTYPE or something and adjust accordingly. If the page was XHTML 2.0 then the browser ignores deprecated tags...
But your question makes me think that we will probably end up with page composers writing a mish-mash of old and new code and the browsers being left to sort it all out.
Perhaps what we need is something like HTML 4 Transitional which has features of both HTML 4 and XHTML 1?
Here at Duke, the school newspaper The Chronicle ran a recent story about the effect of the Patriot act on librarians. I hope that word becomes more widespread about the effect of this passed-in-the-heat-of-the-moment legislation, so that we can get it off the books as soon as possible.
The comparison between what Sun is doing and the monopolistic behaviour of Microsoft is unfair.
Microsoft using its desktop dominance to put IE in front of users before they have a chance to get Netscape is using dominance in one market to gain dominance in another. That's when a company uses a monopoly in a criminal manner.
Sun, on the other hand, is trying to gain share in a market where they have no leverage other than their product and the price they're willing to sell it at. They aren't leveraging their hardware products (AFAICT) to get people to use Star Office. They aren't using Solaris to push Star Office onto these companies. They are doing what any non-monopoly company would do when entering a new market: offering their products at a very low price (here, free) to encourage users to switch. The pay-off comes far, far down the line when Star Office (potentially) becomes a real player in the field of office software.
In short: Microsoft leverages OS dominance to gain browser dominance. Sun uses low price to gain a foothold in office productivity market. Not the same thing.