Well, for one thing, I haven't had the problems you've had.
For another, I'm a code-geek. Roughly half of what I do, I do in/bin/bash and emacs.
And last, when I plug my camera in, when I go to a new wireless spot, when I close the lid with the machine still on to go to sleep, the shit just works. Every time.
"It's not in Redhat's commercial interest for another Linux vendor to gain market share by excelling in the home desktop Linux market that Redhat has just vacated. "
Say what?!?!?!
No matter how well Red Hat Enterprise works with Windows boxes, it will always interoperate better with Linux desktop systems. It will always be easier to set up for Linux desktop systems. It will always be easier to maintain for Linux desktop systems. PHB's know this, as do you and I.
Thus, ANY kind of loss of Linux market share to Windows is going to HURT RED HAT ENTERPRISE SALES. It is MUCH better for Red Hat if another Linux company takes up the slack, because Mandrake/SuSE/Slackware/Debian will ALL interoperate better with Red Hat than Windows.
"Brace yourself; there's a downside, and it's only going to get bigger."
Please step back away from the Kool-Aid. Thank you.
On the one hand, he just pissed off a lot of the loyal Red Hat users. On the other hand, he just turned a bunch of consumers off of Linux. And on the third hand, for you three-handed folks out there, he's going to turn off his enterprise consumers as well by saying, "There's something we don't do well."
Now it may very well be true that Linux doesn't do the desktop well, it may not be. I've got my own opinion, as do you.
The point is that when you are trying to sell something, as Red Hat is, you don't say, "We don't do this, and don't think people should try it with our product." You say, "We may not do this well, but we think people can do it, and we're working hard to make the experience even better." This is Public Relations 101 for cryin' out loud.
How the hell did Red Hat get this loon? And what's the over/under on Red Hat's PR department releasing an "Explanation" within the next 24 hours???
"Monopoly is taking market share by force rather than by normal market behavior."
What you've described here is the typical means for achieving a monopoly. The dictionary definition of "Monopoly" is a company having exclusive right to control and sell a commodity. Typically this is done through collusion with a government or among individuals. It's not required, however.
Something that is popular to the point where it controls the market would therefore be a monopoly, just the same as a monopoly that was granted through a government grant/edict or through market muscling.
"This does point out the bigger question of why the technical community is not taken seriously on political issues."
I believe it is because the way that technical people see problems is very different form the way that non-technical people see problems.
Technical problems typically involve tradeoffs. E.g. if you use this certain data structure, you will get fast deletion and insertion, at the cost of slower searching; if you use this data structure searching, deletion and insertion are all reasonably fast, but it is difficult to code.
The concept of a compromise is thus in our vocabulary, but usually it's a negative -- that is, most technical compromises suck.
The idea of a win-win scenario, where everyone wins, is very foreign to us techies. We see things in terms of "this vs. that."
RTFA to see a great example of this. The political points made are all made in terms of "Us vs. Them." They are on one side, and they are in opposition to another side. It is very warlike, in fact, and someone who does not already agree with their point of view -- who might not yet have an opinion on the matter -- is going to be very put off by the language used. And those who do disagree but who are otherwise open-minded are immediately going to be put on the defensive.
The only solution to the problem with Diebold (for example) that will help things is a solution that also helps Diebold's bottom line.
Consider this point of view: Diebold faces a long-term growth problem if they force buggy voting machines on the public. The truth always comes out, and if Diebold doesn't take action, the resulting backlash and loss of trust will bury the company. If, however, they acknowledge what is a simple technical limitation and fix it, and work with the community, they are not only likely to land contracts now, but to dominate the market in the future. This leads to substantial revenue in the future.
Notice that I'm talking about what Diebold itself is most concerned with. This is the only way to have any discussion: Talk to people in terms of their interests, not yours. Diebold doesn't care one way or another, as a company, how they make money. But obviously destruction of Democracy as an institution is bad for them: They will be the first ones lined up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Unlike technical solutions, people problems deal with people, who are irrational and emotional. If you consider someone else's point of view first, you can get them to see your side of things, and convince them to pursue another course of action. And when that happens, everyone thinks they win. And when everyone thinks they can benefit from a course of action, suddenly change becomes easy.
Candidate G then goes through all of the voter receipts, finds those who voted for Candidate B. And maybe overtly, maybe covertly, starts retaliating against you and other who voted for Candidate B. Maybe the airbase where you work gets closed. Maybe your driver's license gets suspended for no particular reason. Maybe you hear a clicking noise whenever you make a phone call.
One of the most vital bits of democracy is the ability to vote anonymously. So a paper trail is still the only way to go. The government knows that I voted, but they don't know who I voted for, and that's the way it must be -- for our own security.
A recent example of this was Sears. They recently sold off their Novus/Discover unit, which was the only profitable part of the company, to focus on their sagging retail division.
The gamble worked: Their retail division went from crap to profit in one quarter. By focusing their efforts on one thing and doing it well, they were able to create value.
Our AC friend here is right. Fedora is the testbed for all new things that would go into Red Hat Linux. For a while, Red Hat was essentially giving out two free operating systems -- Fedora, and Red Hat Linux. Fedora is essentially "Red Hat Linux Beta." Why do they need two new free OSes? They can pick one, and not the other. Obviously, as a testbed for new ideas, Fedora has more value. As users, hopefully this means no more waiting six months for Mozilla to get upgraded; we may be able to play with the latest and greatest RPM's.
So the move makes sense, both for RedHat and for users. So I, for one, welcome our new Fedora Overlords. (Come on, you saw that coming, didn't you?)
Games are not just interactive. They also are relatively social. He mentioned how some of the clans have BBQ's together, and actually get to meet each other.
I remember this happening back when I was in the PC Demoscene in college. NAID '96 was the first time I'd met almost all of these people with whom I had spent countless hours with, making, watching, and discussing the various artworks and programs that made up that odd subculture. Online games are bringing people together in a way that TV hasn't. Is it any wonder that cable companies are trying to bring that interactivity to the TV now?
I was thinking of cryptography done on quantum computers, not necessarily of quantum cryptography (which, honestly, I hadn't even heard of before this). This encryption scheme may not have even been invented yet; it just seems likely, based on past history, that the birth of quantum computing will not mean the end of encryption.
Right, but I'm thinking beyond mere bits. Nobody did this kind of public-key encryption before computers came about. There was public key encryption, but not of this nature. This suggests that there will be an entirely different sort of public-key encryption when quantum computing becomes a reality -- a kind done in an entirely different way.
The bit-width of your key wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with it.
I think that modern encryption schemes could be broken really quickly.
Imagine what kind of encryption you could do with quantum computing. When the first computers were built, most of the standard methods of encryption became obsolete -- ones that usually involved simple letter-substitution. That wasn't the end of encryption; those same computers enabled new ways to encrypt messages.
So it stands to reason that the existence of quantum computers would lead to new quantum encryption methods, which would take millions of years for the best quantum computers to crack using brute-force.
(I grew up in Amarillo, the only town in America whose Chamber of Commerce actually envies Lubbock -- and I am only saying that because I went to an Amarillo CoC banquet whose theme was "Beat Lubbock!"... so anyway, that's why I have to give Lubbock heck.)
Have you ever heard a representative of one company or another say, "I'm sorry, but we cannot comment on legal matters?"
There is a very good reason why you should keep your trap shut when you're involved in a lawsuit: "Everything you say can and will be used against you in court." Now I KNOW you've heard that one.
You do not discuss legal action until the case is over with. Time and time again, SCO's refusal to keep their lips zipped has fed IBM more fuel for their own counter-suits and defense. Everything they have said can and will be used against them by IBM.
IBM is not making the same mistake.
I also feel that their brevity and silence makes the cloud forming over SCO only seem darker, but that's just my own bias talking there. The reality is that what you don't say won't come back to haunt you later.
"The core dev's answer: Shut up and stop complaining we are doing the best we can."
The Cyg/X maintainer's frustration with this is totally understandable. And it comes out in an ugly way. His comment, "Let me make direct commits within 2 months, or I will pull out of the project altogether" isn't exactly dressed for success. Making threats, seriously or not, never gets people to come to your way of thinking.
This is not Open Source/Free Software's proudest moment. With luck, perhaps it will be a moment that will lead to a better X.
Yes, of course he's not black. Clinton's not black, either, and he got a lot of votes from African-Americans. If a politician wants a group's votes, he needs to sound like he's either a member of a group, or supports that group's interests.
By constantly saying "You people," the underlying message Perot gave was: "You and me are separate and we're going to stay that way." Compare this to Clinton's "I feel your pain" approach: It said, "I may not be black, but I understand disenfranchisement."
Back to topic, the message Infinium gave with this comment is: "We're not really by gamers for gamers as the company motto says, and we think you'll buy whatever we give you."
I remember when Ross Perot gave a speech to the NAACP during his presidential campaign, he kept using the phrase, "You people."
The crowd became outright hostile as the speech wore on. I remember hearing one person incredulously shout, "US people???"
I can't imagine the crowd at the presentation reacted any better.
So Infinium believes Us People will buy basically whatever any console manufacturer makes, eh? I guess they're unaware of the Sega Saturn. Or the Atari Jaguar. Maybe they believe Nokia's press releases, and not their in-store sales figures on the N-Gage. I don't know. It seems to me that the video game industry has more failed consoles than successes.
But then, I'm not in the business; I just play games.
3dfx was not exactly making waves with their cards' features at the time. With the Voodoo5, other than the T-buffer, they had just caught up to the feature set where Nvidia's TNT2 had been two generations earlier. Transformation and Lighting features were being implemented by everyone except for them, and they were left behind.
" The 60fps is the average maximum that most of us can see. Considering that this is twice what movies are shown at,(actually its a bit more complicated, some theaters project each frame twice to reduce flicker) and just under the refresh rate for most monitors, I dont think this is a problem."
There's an important difference between frames on film and frames on a game. Frames on film contain an average of an object's movement over the time frame; frames on a game only have the object at that point. In English, film blurs movement. Ever see a game at 24fps? It looks terrible. But a film at the same framerate looks smooth. Even animated films use techniques to blur objects that are moving fast (Road Runner, q.v.).
What's happening is that people are using the power of new graphics cards to implement new features to make the environments more realistic -- lighting, curved surfaces, etc. Graphics card performance hasn't been about polys and framerate in a long time; all of the big new changes have been based around lighting models and new features.
Incidentally, this is one of the issues that killed off 3dfx in the marketplace; although their cards could stand toe-to-toe with the best Nvidia and ATI had to offer, 3dfx's Voodoo5 was still just fast 16-bit rendering hardware -- essentially the same technology that had been released in the Voodoo 1 years before. Meanwhile, everyone else had moved on to bigger and better things with transformation and lighting hardware integrated onto their boards.
I remember playing Space Quest II my Freshman year in College, in Fall of '91. Yeah, I realize it was dated by then, but I'd already played IV, the re-hash of I and III, so I wanted to play one that was supposedly one of the best.
Trouble is, after you go through a handful of these Sierra games, you get the knack for solving the puzzles. And once you get the knack, you've finished the game in 2 hours, with no replay value.
Why spend $50 for 2 hours' worth of entertainment? You could go to a 2-hour movie back then for $5 on opening night. What the hell?
If a game gets shorter, it better have some great replay value (see Diablo) or a lower price (see the copy of "Space Channel 5" I got out of a bargain bin for $5). Otherwise it's not worth my money to purchase it.
I expect a game to entertain me for at least 10 hours, and that's a bare minimum reserved for games that are especially good; 40 hours is more likely.
Finishing the game isn't really the issue. The question is, as the gladiator asks, "Are you not entertained?"
The reality is that these are companies with deep enough pockets that they can afford to pay the licenses and won't spare the expense to fight SCO in court.
Look, I'm platform-agnostic. I have an iBook, an XP desktop, and a Linux server. I use 'em for what I use 'em for.
You sound very upset with Apple. That's fine; I once was upset with them because they ditched the Apple//e, and I -loved- that computer.
But in retrospect, that was silly of me...why love an outdated piece of equipment? It's only good for what it's good for.
The truth is I think all three systems are great. They're all leaps and bounds above what we've had to deal with in the past. XP is slick, reliable and smooth, and has great integration of parts. OS X has unbeatable plug 'n' play and hardware integration combined with all my favorite GNU stuff like Emacs. And Linux has incredible power and performance, and is a control-freak hacker geek's dream. All of them are powerful, beautiful systems that just keep getting better.
I agree with you that not all fundamentalists are zealots, and not all zealots are fundamentalists. One of my best friends grew up in a fundamentalist family, but this did not manifest itself in baby-killing, gay-bashing, or any of a number of poor behaviors. But this family did believe that homosexuality was immoral and that abortion was wrong.
By the same token not all zealots are fundamentalists. Mother Theresa was very much a zealot -- zealotry is merely the strong drive to serve a cause. It just so happened her cause was serving Christ by helping starving children in Calcutta.
What happens is when you have enough fundamentalists and zealots to have a large population of fundamentalist zealots, then you end up with a handful of fundamentalist zealot criminals. And these are the ones that burn construction sites, join the Klan, or blow up the WTC.
And these are the ones we geeks must separate ourselves from. We must be the best police force for our own criminal elements, or else be condemned with them.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, for one thing, I haven't had the problems you've had.
/bin/bash and emacs.
For another, I'm a code-geek. Roughly half of what I do, I do in
And last, when I plug my camera in, when I go to a new wireless spot, when I close the lid with the machine still on to go to sleep, the shit just works. Every time.
"It's not in Redhat's commercial interest for another Linux vendor to gain market share by excelling in the home desktop Linux market that Redhat has just vacated. "
Say what?!?!?!
No matter how well Red Hat Enterprise works with Windows boxes, it will always interoperate better with Linux desktop systems. It will always be easier to set up for Linux desktop systems. It will always be easier to maintain for Linux desktop systems. PHB's know this, as do you and I.
Thus, ANY kind of loss of Linux market share to Windows is going to HURT RED HAT ENTERPRISE SALES. It is MUCH better for Red Hat if another Linux company takes up the slack, because Mandrake/SuSE/Slackware/Debian will ALL interoperate better with Red Hat than Windows.
"Brace yourself; there's a downside, and it's only going to get bigger."
Please step back away from the Kool-Aid. Thank you.
What the hell is this idiot thinking?
On the one hand, he just pissed off a lot of the loyal Red Hat users. On the other hand, he just turned a bunch of consumers off of Linux. And on the third hand, for you three-handed folks out there, he's going to turn off his enterprise consumers as well by saying, "There's something we don't do well."
Now it may very well be true that Linux doesn't do the desktop well, it may not be. I've got my own opinion, as do you.
The point is that when you are trying to sell something, as Red Hat is, you don't say, "We don't do this, and don't think people should try it with our product." You say, "We may not do this well, but we think people can do it, and we're working hard to make the experience even better." This is Public Relations 101 for cryin' out loud.
How the hell did Red Hat get this loon? And what's the over/under on Red Hat's PR department releasing an "Explanation" within the next 24 hours???
Things are not going well down Red Hat way.
"Monopoly is taking market share by force rather than by normal market behavior."
What you've described here is the typical means for achieving a monopoly. The dictionary definition of "Monopoly" is a company having exclusive right to control and sell a commodity. Typically this is done through collusion with a government or among individuals. It's not required, however.
Something that is popular to the point where it controls the market would therefore be a monopoly, just the same as a monopoly that was granted through a government grant/edict or through market muscling.
"This does point out the bigger question of why the technical community is not taken seriously on political issues."
I believe it is because the way that technical people see problems is very different form the way that non-technical people see problems.
Technical problems typically involve tradeoffs. E.g. if you use this certain data structure, you will get fast deletion and insertion, at the cost of slower searching; if you use this data structure searching, deletion and insertion are all reasonably fast, but it is difficult to code.
The concept of a compromise is thus in our vocabulary, but usually it's a negative -- that is, most technical compromises suck.
The idea of a win-win scenario, where everyone wins, is very foreign to us techies. We see things in terms of "this vs. that."
RTFA to see a great example of this. The political points made are all made in terms of "Us vs. Them." They are on one side, and they are in opposition to another side. It is very warlike, in fact, and someone who does not already agree with their point of view -- who might not yet have an opinion on the matter -- is going to be very put off by the language used. And those who do disagree but who are otherwise open-minded are immediately going to be put on the defensive.
The only solution to the problem with Diebold (for example) that will help things is a solution that also helps Diebold's bottom line.
Consider this point of view: Diebold faces a long-term growth problem if they force buggy voting machines on the public. The truth always comes out, and if Diebold doesn't take action, the resulting backlash and loss of trust will bury the company. If, however, they acknowledge what is a simple technical limitation and fix it, and work with the community, they are not only likely to land contracts now, but to dominate the market in the future. This leads to substantial revenue in the future.
Notice that I'm talking about what Diebold itself is most concerned with. This is the only way to have any discussion: Talk to people in terms of their interests, not yours. Diebold doesn't care one way or another, as a company, how they make money. But obviously destruction of Democracy as an institution is bad for them: They will be the first ones lined up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Unlike technical solutions, people problems deal with people, who are irrational and emotional. If you consider someone else's point of view first, you can get them to see your side of things, and convince them to pursue another course of action. And when that happens, everyone thinks they win. And when everyone thinks they can benefit from a course of action, suddenly change becomes easy.
"Ok, I won't panic or do anything hasty like install Gentoo."
:)
Heh, heh, heh... Not that that'd be hasty.
Consider this.
You vote for Candidate B. Candidate G wins.
Candidate G then goes through all of the voter receipts, finds those who voted for Candidate B. And maybe overtly, maybe covertly, starts retaliating against you and other who voted for Candidate B. Maybe the airbase where you work gets closed. Maybe your driver's license gets suspended for no particular reason. Maybe you hear a clicking noise whenever you make a phone call.
One of the most vital bits of democracy is the ability to vote anonymously. So a paper trail is still the only way to go. The government knows that I voted, but they don't know who I voted for, and that's the way it must be -- for our own security.
A recent example of this was Sears. They recently sold off their Novus/Discover unit, which was the only profitable part of the company, to focus on their sagging retail division.
The gamble worked: Their retail division went from crap to profit in one quarter. By focusing their efforts on one thing and doing it well, they were able to create value.
Our AC friend here is right. Fedora is the testbed for all new things that would go into Red Hat Linux. For a while, Red Hat was essentially giving out two free operating systems -- Fedora, and Red Hat Linux. Fedora is essentially "Red Hat Linux Beta." Why do they need two new free OSes? They can pick one, and not the other. Obviously, as a testbed for new ideas, Fedora has more value. As users, hopefully this means no more waiting six months for Mozilla to get upgraded; we may be able to play with the latest and greatest RPM's.
So the move makes sense, both for RedHat and for users. So I, for one, welcome our new Fedora Overlords. (Come on, you saw that coming, didn't you?)
Games are not just interactive. They also are relatively social. He mentioned how some of the clans have BBQ's together, and actually get to meet each other.
I remember this happening back when I was in the PC Demoscene in college. NAID '96 was the first time I'd met almost all of these people with whom I had spent countless hours with, making, watching, and discussing the various artworks and programs that made up that odd subculture. Online games are bringing people together in a way that TV hasn't. Is it any wonder that cable companies are trying to bring that interactivity to the TV now?
I was thinking of cryptography done on quantum computers, not necessarily of quantum cryptography (which, honestly, I hadn't even heard of before this). This encryption scheme may not have even been invented yet; it just seems likely, based on past history, that the birth of quantum computing will not mean the end of encryption.
Right, but I'm thinking beyond mere bits. Nobody did this kind of public-key encryption before computers came about. There was public key encryption, but not of this nature. This suggests that there will be an entirely different sort of public-key encryption when quantum computing becomes a reality -- a kind done in an entirely different way.
The bit-width of your key wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with it.
I think that modern encryption schemes could be broken really quickly.
Imagine what kind of encryption you could do with quantum computing. When the first computers were built, most of the standard methods of encryption became obsolete -- ones that usually involved simple letter-substitution. That wasn't the end of encryption; those same computers enabled new ways to encrypt messages.
So it stands to reason that the existence of quantum computers would lead to new quantum encryption methods, which would take millions of years for the best quantum computers to crack using brute-force.
Figures it'd be some guy from Lubbock. :)
(I grew up in Amarillo, the only town in America whose Chamber of Commerce actually envies Lubbock -- and I am only saying that because I went to an Amarillo CoC banquet whose theme was "Beat Lubbock!"... so anyway, that's why I have to give Lubbock heck.)
Have you ever heard a representative of one company or another say, "I'm sorry, but we cannot comment on legal matters?"
There is a very good reason why you should keep your trap shut when you're involved in a lawsuit: "Everything you say can and will be used against you in court." Now I KNOW you've heard that one.
You do not discuss legal action until the case is over with. Time and time again, SCO's refusal to keep their lips zipped has fed IBM more fuel for their own counter-suits and defense. Everything they have said can and will be used against them by IBM.
IBM is not making the same mistake.
I also feel that their brevity and silence makes the cloud forming over SCO only seem darker, but that's just my own bias talking there. The reality is that what you don't say won't come back to haunt you later.
"The core dev's answer: Shut up and stop complaining we are doing the best we can."
The Cyg/X maintainer's frustration with this is totally understandable. And it comes out in an ugly way. His comment, "Let me make direct commits within 2 months, or I will pull out of the project altogether" isn't exactly dressed for success. Making threats, seriously or not, never gets people to come to your way of thinking.
This is not Open Source/Free Software's proudest moment. With luck, perhaps it will be a moment that will lead to a better X.
Yes, of course he's not black. Clinton's not black, either, and he got a lot of votes from African-Americans. If a politician wants a group's votes, he needs to sound like he's either a member of a group, or supports that group's interests.
By constantly saying "You people," the underlying message Perot gave was: "You and me are separate and we're going to stay that way." Compare this to Clinton's "I feel your pain" approach: It said, "I may not be black, but I understand disenfranchisement."
Back to topic, the message Infinium gave with this comment is: "We're not really by gamers for gamers as the company motto says, and we think you'll buy whatever we give you."
I remember when Ross Perot gave a speech to the NAACP during his presidential campaign, he kept using the phrase, "You people."
The crowd became outright hostile as the speech wore on. I remember hearing one person incredulously shout, "US people???"
I can't imagine the crowd at the presentation reacted any better.
So Infinium believes Us People will buy basically whatever any console manufacturer makes, eh? I guess they're unaware of the Sega Saturn. Or the Atari Jaguar. Maybe they believe Nokia's press releases, and not their in-store sales figures on the N-Gage. I don't know. It seems to me that the video game industry has more failed consoles than successes.
But then, I'm not in the business; I just play games.
3dfx was not exactly making waves with their cards' features at the time. With the Voodoo5, other than the T-buffer, they had just caught up to the feature set where Nvidia's TNT2 had been two generations earlier. Transformation and Lighting features were being implemented by everyone except for them, and they were left behind.
Thus, the story ended for 3dfx.
" The 60fps is the average maximum that most of us can see. Considering that this is twice what movies are shown at,(actually its a bit more complicated, some theaters project each frame twice to reduce flicker) and just under the refresh rate for most monitors, I dont think this is a problem."
There's an important difference between frames on film and frames on a game. Frames on film contain an average of an object's movement over the time frame; frames on a game only have the object at that point. In English, film blurs movement. Ever see a game at 24fps? It looks terrible. But a film at the same framerate looks smooth. Even animated films use techniques to blur objects that are moving fast (Road Runner, q.v.).
What's happening is that people are using the power of new graphics cards to implement new features to make the environments more realistic -- lighting, curved surfaces, etc. Graphics card performance hasn't been about polys and framerate in a long time; all of the big new changes have been based around lighting models and new features.
Incidentally, this is one of the issues that killed off 3dfx in the marketplace; although their cards could stand toe-to-toe with the best Nvidia and ATI had to offer, 3dfx's Voodoo5 was still just fast 16-bit rendering hardware -- essentially the same technology that had been released in the Voodoo 1 years before. Meanwhile, everyone else had moved on to bigger and better things with transformation and lighting hardware integrated onto their boards.
Remember Sierra, back in the day?
I remember playing Space Quest II my Freshman year in College, in Fall of '91. Yeah, I realize it was dated by then, but I'd already played IV, the re-hash of I and III, so I wanted to play one that was supposedly one of the best.
Trouble is, after you go through a handful of these Sierra games, you get the knack for solving the puzzles. And once you get the knack, you've finished the game in 2 hours, with no replay value.
Why spend $50 for 2 hours' worth of entertainment? You could go to a 2-hour movie back then for $5 on opening night. What the hell?
If a game gets shorter, it better have some great replay value (see Diablo) or a lower price (see the copy of "Space Channel 5" I got out of a bargain bin for $5). Otherwise it's not worth my money to purchase it.
I expect a game to entertain me for at least 10 hours, and that's a bare minimum reserved for games that are especially good; 40 hours is more likely.
Finishing the game isn't really the issue. The question is, as the gladiator asks, "Are you not entertained?"
The reality is that these are companies with deep enough pockets that they can afford to pay the licenses and won't spare the expense to fight SCO in court.
Ahh, "Violent ideologues!" I like that even better.
Anyhow, that's why I added a third category... "criminal"
so not just fundamentalist zealots, but criminal fundamentalist zealots.
Look, I'm platform-agnostic. I have an iBook, an XP desktop, and a Linux server. I use 'em for what I use 'em for.
//e, and I -loved- that computer.
You sound very upset with Apple. That's fine; I once was upset with them because they ditched the Apple
But in retrospect, that was silly of me...why love an outdated piece of equipment? It's only good for what it's good for.
The truth is I think all three systems are great. They're all leaps and bounds above what we've had to deal with in the past. XP is slick, reliable and smooth, and has great integration of parts. OS X has unbeatable plug 'n' play and hardware integration combined with all my favorite GNU stuff like Emacs. And Linux has incredible power and performance, and is a control-freak hacker geek's dream. All of them are powerful, beautiful systems that just keep getting better.
I can't wait to see where they go next!
I agree with you that not all fundamentalists are zealots, and not all zealots are fundamentalists. One of my best friends grew up in a fundamentalist family, but this did not manifest itself in baby-killing, gay-bashing, or any of a number of poor behaviors. But this family did believe that homosexuality was immoral and that abortion was wrong.
By the same token not all zealots are fundamentalists. Mother Theresa was very much a zealot -- zealotry is merely the strong drive to serve a cause. It just so happened her cause was serving Christ by helping starving children in Calcutta.
What happens is when you have enough fundamentalists and zealots to have a large population of fundamentalist zealots, then you end up with a handful of fundamentalist zealot criminals. And these are the ones that burn construction sites, join the Klan, or blow up the WTC.
And these are the ones we geeks must separate ourselves from. We must be the best police force for our own criminal elements, or else be condemned with them.