Even if the movie engine and the sound system have been ported by somebody else, I suppose they'll need to write *some* Linux specific code for the port. And if they aren't really interested in the Linux port (as they have shown IMO), they won't care if their Linux specific code is buggy.
What happens if Brin one day is the victim of a hate crime by a white person? Will he start blocking Google from indexing predominantly white Web sites such as J. Crew, Kuro5hin, or the New York Islanders home page?
I, for one, will no longer visit Google because I simply can't trust them anymore. I urge others to as well.
You're calling for a Google boycott with the only base of your own wild extrapolation. Google is only refusing some advertising, not turning into some kind of censorware. To this day Google has not given the slightest indication that they will do something so grave as deliberately omitting sites from their index because of their ideology. Your reaction is ridiculous and exaggerated.
They announced another big delay of an already tremendously late product because of the unavailability of some components without even bothering to check with the maker of those components. And yet some people seem to believe Bioware are "working hard" in this port. Awesome.
With this level of interest on Bioware's side, I can only imagine how buggy NWN for Linux will be when it is "finished".
You must have a pretty poor opinion of their development team, if you believe after so much time of hard work (remember we are already six months after their announced release date) the most precise date they can give for release is sometime in Winter. This is simply a Linux port, not rocket science.
I don't think their programmers are so incompetent. My vote is for their marketing department being a bunch of shameless liars instead.
To all people saying Bioware is making a honest effort with this port and should be supported, please realize they are saying their movie player and sound system don't work six months after their announced release date. If the Linux gaming community wasn't too excited about getting this port to make a balanced analysis, nobody would believe in Bioware's good intentions anymore.
Like some person in The Linux Game Tome usually comments after these announcements, "I voted Never in the poll [about when would NWN Linux Client be available] and I stand by my choice".
The license for the text of the AFL is included in the text of the AFL itself:
This license is Copyright (C) 2002 Lawrence E. Rosen. All rights reserved. Permission is hereby granted to copy and distribute this license without modification. This license may not be modified without the express written permission of its copyright owner.
As you can see the text of the AFL is licensed under a very simple proprietary license.
1. Bill's out of his gourd if he thinks telling the Europeans that OSS is anti-capitalist will get him anywhere.
Bill didn't say that to the Europeans (I'd expect Bill is clever enough to avoid making such a mistake). Rather, he said it to leaders of developing countries. The quote is from a conference in April.
2. Is anyone worried about this tendency within the EU towards standardization and centralization?
I believe standardization and centralization are not only good but necessary for the future of Europeans.
I mean, the French definitely want things back as they were in 1680, or thereabouts, with France in control of the continent.
Why only France? It seems to me that Germany also has a lot of influence. And even for the smaller countries, being in the EU gives them more control on their future, not less.
It means "the rain in Seville is wonderful". It has been taken from the Spanish translation of the film "My Fair Lady". I think the original English sentence was "in Spain the rain falls always in the plain", or something like that, but the translators adapted it so the translation would also repeat a difficult phoneme ("ai" in the original, "ll" in the translation).
Please remember I wrote ten emails.
Ok, so maybe my first email was ignored because
the developer was busy. Maybe my second email
was accidentally mistaken for spam (although I'm
sure I didn't mention enlarging anything) and
deleted. Perhaps my third email went unanswered
because all who read it were expecting that
anybody else would answer. But when they ignored
my ten bug reports (and I sent them
during an interval of about half a year),
I don't think it can be a matter
of chance. It must be a matter of policy: if
what you say doesn't interest us, we won't spare
a minute letting you know. With that attitude,
any attempt at improving their PR is in vain.
What you say about getting to know their
community reveals me that you've never approached
Xfree, so you think they're like any other generic
large free software project, like the Linux kernel
for example. You are wrong. Unless they've
changed since last year, they do most of their
internal email traffic in private, closed lists
that you can't read, much less write to,
unless you are a member of the project.
So what you are suggesting is not possible.
Read
here for details.
I'll repeat it: I'm not a newbie. I know your
advice is good intentioned, but everything you
said, I already considered before I sent them my first
bug report. I think if I couldn't get
a word from them, the average experienced free
software developer won't get it either.
To me, they now appear not very differently
of a gratis (no cost) proprietary software
project, even if they're volunteers.
And I'm worried about that, because the XFree
project is capital to free software; that's why
I'm "bitching", as you called it.
Hmpf. I know how free software projects work.
I'm not saying that they had to fix the driver
for me. I tried to make clear in my comment that
what got me frustrated was that they thoroughly
ignored me. That's just rude.
They, like most free software projects,
encourage bug reports. I took the time to
read their bug report guidelines, collect
detailed information and write the best bug
report I could... and not one of them could
spend a few seconds to let me know somebody
had read my mail.
If they didn't want to fix their driver,
they could have told me. If they thought I was
a stupid moron for bothering them with older
cards, they could have told me. Instead, they
let me write ten mails before I gave up.
(By the way, I did try to fix the driver
myself, with no success. Fortunately I have
updated my computer and now I own a GeForce).
Between release 3.3.6 and 4.0, some bug was
introduced in the mga driver. As a result, 4.0
and later don't work for older Matrox Mystique
cards, such as the one I had.
I wrote about ten mails, along half a year,
reporting this to the XFree86 developers. I wrote
to several of their mailing lists, to their bug
report page, I used their bug report tool,
I tried to contact them by every mean I could
think of. And I never got an answer from them.
Not a word. Nothing.
Sure, I am not a Linux guru, but I don't think
I'm a complete newbie either. I have been using
Linux heavily since four years ago and I've
occasionally contacted with the maintainers
of several projects, and I've never had a problem, except
with XFree86.
I know that developers don't want
their time wasted by bad bug reports, so I
carefully followed the instructions on their web
page. I included in my mails every detail that seemed
possibly relevant to me, and told them to please
ask anything else they needed to know.
I expected that, if my bug reports weren't perfect,
at least somebody would tell me what they were
missing. But I got NOTHING.
More than a problem of PR, they seem to have
a problem of attitude.
This isn't new even for EA. This quote from the article surprised me:
"We started in-game advertising for the first time in December, and we generated a couple million dollars of revenue with that" EA President John Riccitiello told [...]
The quote is not true. I used to play FIFA 95, a soccer game released by EA in 94 or 95 (I don't remember now), and it had a lot of in-game advertising. It wasn't only the usual advertisements on the sides of the playing field. When you scored a goal, the game stopped for some seconds while logos of sponsors appeared in a box in the center of the screen. If I remember correctly, some of the sponsors were Panasonic and Adidas.
Since FIFA 95, EA Sports has released a soccer game every year (FIFA 96, 97,..., 2001). I haven't played any of them, but I believe they do have some advertising. EA President doesn't seem very well informed, really.
I'm Spanish and I've always lived in Spain. Almost all the Spanish population is of the same race as me (we call it white, but you may disagree), so I've never experienced racism first hand. However, after reading some of the comments posted by black people, I'd like to give my opinion.
People tend to feel more comfortable with similar people; that's human nature. In greater or lesser degree, that happens to everybody: white people, black people, men, women, geeks. Maybe you'd call that racism, sexism or classism, but I don't think that one race, sex or class is more guilty of it than others. As I said, it's human nature.
Maybe it's unfair, but there's no use in getting frustrated about it. You have to accept it, just as you accept that people that is more articulate, more physically attractive or more sympathetic than you have more probabilities to be successful, even if you are more competent than them.
Perhaps as society evolves and people become more rational this problem will lose importance. Meanwhile, we'll have to cope with it.
Yeah, that kind of statements also surprise me. Many Americans admit not knowing much about the other countries, but they still believe that the USA is the best one. "Best" implies a comparation; how can they compare without knowing different countries? No offence, but maybe it's the media who have implanted that idea in most Americans?
Hey, finally a story I can comment on as a Spaniard!
I think the problem here is not that the Spanish tongue may just disappear, which doesn't seem very probable at the moment, as many have pointed out. The problem is fragmentation; for languages spoken over wide areas and different cultures, such as Spanish, there is always the danger that with time they may diverge, eventually becoming different languages. That would be disadvantageous for all the Spanish speaking people, as the worth of speaking any given language depends on the people you can communicate to using that language.
American English doesn't face that problem, since there is a strong culture and communication industry that will encourage the existence of a standard, although changing, language. I don't think Spanish is in the same case, and the problem of fragmentation might be very real.
as *everyone* knows BSD now natively runs linux apps and is far more secure than linux.
But the cause (Open)BSD is more secure than Linux is not the kernel; it's the applications. If you run Linux applications under BSD, then your BSD system is about as secure as a Linux system. And anyway, most security holes are caused by misconfigurations, and no OS can't protect you from them.
I think that probably Apple chose BSD instead of Linux because of licensing, not because of security.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if the movie engine and the sound system have been ported by somebody else, I suppose they'll need to write *some* Linux specific code for the port. And if they aren't really interested in the Linux port (as they have shown IMO), they won't care if their Linux specific code is buggy.
You're calling for a Google boycott with the only base of your own wild extrapolation. Google is only refusing some advertising, not turning into some kind of censorware. To this day Google has not given the slightest indication that they will do something so grave as deliberately omitting sites from their index because of their ideology. Your reaction is ridiculous and exaggerated.
They announced another big delay of an already tremendously late product because of the unavailability of some components without even bothering to check with the maker of those components. And yet some people seem to believe Bioware are "working hard" in this port. Awesome.
With this level of interest on Bioware's side, I can only imagine how buggy NWN for Linux will be when it is "finished".
You must have a pretty poor opinion of their development team, if you believe after so much time of hard work (remember we are already six months after their announced release date) the most precise date they can give for release is sometime in Winter. This is simply a Linux port, not rocket science.
I don't think their programmers are so incompetent. My vote is for their marketing department being a bunch of shameless liars instead.
To all people saying Bioware is making a honest effort with this port and should be supported, please realize they are saying their movie player and sound system don't work six months after their announced release date. If the Linux gaming community wasn't too excited about getting this port to make a balanced analysis, nobody would believe in Bioware's good intentions anymore.
Like some person in The Linux Game Tome usually comments after these announcements, "I voted Never in the poll [about when would NWN Linux Client be available] and I stand by my choice".
What about the KDE Usability Project?.
Nice PR term for "bug fixes". I like it :-).
more invisible voices urging me to do bad things.
Do you mean there are visible voices? (when you're sober anyway).
The license for the text of the AFL is included in the text of the AFL itself:
As you can see the text of the AFL is licensed under a very simple proprietary license.
If you're talking about emacs, that was Stallman, who likes Lisp because he comes from MIT.
On a floppy? He must be using lzip.
Bill didn't say that to the Europeans (I'd expect Bill is clever enough to avoid making such a mistake). Rather, he said it to leaders of developing countries. The quote is from a conference in April.
I believe standardization and centralization are not only good but necessary for the future of Europeans.
Why only France? It seems to me that Germany also has a lot of influence. And even for the smaller countries, being in the EU gives them more control on their future, not less.
No, it wasn't. It was interrupt 21h. Interrupt 20h was a CP/M compatibility leftover.
It means "the rain in Seville is wonderful". It has been taken from the Spanish translation of the film "My Fair Lady". I think the original English sentence was "in Spain the rain falls always in the plain", or something like that, but the translators adapted it so the translation would also repeat a difficult phoneme ("ai" in the original, "ll" in the translation).
Please remember I wrote ten emails. Ok, so maybe my first email was ignored because the developer was busy. Maybe my second email was accidentally mistaken for spam (although I'm sure I didn't mention enlarging anything) and deleted. Perhaps my third email went unanswered because all who read it were expecting that anybody else would answer. But when they ignored my ten bug reports (and I sent them during an interval of about half a year), I don't think it can be a matter of chance. It must be a matter of policy: if what you say doesn't interest us, we won't spare a minute letting you know. With that attitude, any attempt at improving their PR is in vain.
What you say about getting to know their community reveals me that you've never approached Xfree, so you think they're like any other generic large free software project, like the Linux kernel for example. You are wrong. Unless they've changed since last year, they do most of their internal email traffic in private, closed lists that you can't read, much less write to, unless you are a member of the project. So what you are suggesting is not possible. Read here for details.
I'll repeat it: I'm not a newbie. I know your advice is good intentioned, but everything you said, I already considered before I sent them my first bug report. I think if I couldn't get a word from them, the average experienced free software developer won't get it either. To me, they now appear not very differently of a gratis (no cost) proprietary software project, even if they're volunteers.
And I'm worried about that, because the XFree project is capital to free software; that's why I'm "bitching", as you called it.
Hmpf. I know how free software projects work. I'm not saying that they had to fix the driver for me. I tried to make clear in my comment that what got me frustrated was that they thoroughly ignored me. That's just rude.
They, like most free software projects, encourage bug reports. I took the time to read their bug report guidelines, collect detailed information and write the best bug report I could... and not one of them could spend a few seconds to let me know somebody had read my mail.
If they didn't want to fix their driver, they could have told me. If they thought I was a stupid moron for bothering them with older cards, they could have told me. Instead, they let me write ten mails before I gave up.
(By the way, I did try to fix the driver myself, with no success. Fortunately I have updated my computer and now I own a GeForce).
I'm very frustrated at XFree developers.
Between release 3.3.6 and 4.0, some bug was introduced in the mga driver. As a result, 4.0 and later don't work for older Matrox Mystique cards, such as the one I had.
I wrote about ten mails, along half a year, reporting this to the XFree86 developers. I wrote to several of their mailing lists, to their bug report page, I used their bug report tool, I tried to contact them by every mean I could think of. And I never got an answer from them. Not a word. Nothing.
Sure, I am not a Linux guru, but I don't think I'm a complete newbie either. I have been using Linux heavily since four years ago and I've occasionally contacted with the maintainers of several projects, and I've never had a problem, except with XFree86.
I know that developers don't want their time wasted by bad bug reports, so I carefully followed the instructions on their web page. I included in my mails every detail that seemed possibly relevant to me, and told them to please ask anything else they needed to know. I expected that, if my bug reports weren't perfect, at least somebody would tell me what they were missing. But I got NOTHING.
More than a problem of PR, they seem to have a problem of attitude.
This isn't new even for EA. This quote from the article surprised me:
The quote is not true. I used to play FIFA 95, a soccer game released by EA in 94 or 95 (I don't remember now), and it had a lot of in-game advertising. It wasn't only the usual advertisements on the sides of the playing field. When you scored a goal, the game stopped for some seconds while logos of sponsors appeared in a box in the center of the screen. If I remember correctly, some of the sponsors were Panasonic and Adidas.
Since FIFA 95, EA Sports has released a soccer game every year (FIFA 96, 97, ..., 2001). I haven't played any of them, but I believe they do have some advertising. EA President doesn't seem very well informed, really.
I'm Spanish and I've always lived in Spain. Almost all the Spanish population is of the same race as me (we call it white, but you may disagree), so I've never experienced racism first hand. However, after reading some of the comments posted by black people, I'd like to give my opinion.
People tend to feel more comfortable with similar people; that's human nature. In greater or lesser degree, that happens to everybody: white people, black people, men, women, geeks. Maybe you'd call that racism, sexism or classism, but I don't think that one race, sex or class is more guilty of it than others. As I said, it's human nature.
Maybe it's unfair, but there's no use in getting frustrated about it. You have to accept it, just as you accept that people that is more articulate, more physically attractive or more sympathetic than you have more probabilities to be successful, even if you are more competent than them.
Perhaps as society evolves and people become more rational this problem will lose importance. Meanwhile, we'll have to cope with it.
Yeah, that kind of statements also surprise me. Many Americans admit not knowing much about the other countries, but they still believe that the USA is the best one. "Best" implies a comparation; how can they compare without knowing different countries? No offence, but maybe it's the media who have implanted that idea in most Americans?
I think the problem here is not that the Spanish tongue may just disappear, which doesn't seem very probable at the moment, as many have pointed out. The problem is fragmentation; for languages spoken over wide areas and different cultures, such as Spanish, there is always the danger that with time they may diverge, eventually becoming different languages. That would be disadvantageous for all the Spanish speaking people, as the worth of speaking any given language depends on the people you can communicate to using that language.
American English doesn't face that problem, since there is a strong culture and communication industry that will encourage the existence of a standard, although changing, language. I don't think Spanish is in the same case, and the problem of fragmentation might be very real.
But the cause (Open)BSD is more secure than Linux is not the kernel; it's the applications. If you run Linux applications under BSD, then your BSD system is about as secure as a Linux system. And anyway, most security holes are caused by misconfigurations, and no OS can't protect you from them.
I think that probably Apple chose BSD instead of Linux because of licensing, not because of security.
The correct name is JorgeLuis Borges, not JoseLuis Borges.