I walk my dog at an off-leash park every day, and in the dead of winter it gets pitch-dark here around 4:30pm. We have a light-up collar, but you can only see it from specific angles, so I used an arduino lilypad to add some lights to her jacket. The arduino board means I can make the lights be any colour I like, or even have patterns, and (most importantly) I can make them turn on automatically when it gets dark.
Hey, free money. Not like the PI has any permanent storage so they'd just have to stick the file on some chip somewhere, where it can't really be accessed. Not that an.exe would even be executable.
Better yet - ship every Raspberry PI with an SD card labelled "Malware - Please execute immediately."
> Online play was free for PS3 and paid for Xbox 360. This generation Sony decided to start charging too.
And that's the point where the advantages of PC gaming outweighed the disadvantages for me. Up until that, I was willing to put up with consoles, but that was the last straw.
Like I said, I'd love to be wrong, and I'd LOVE my gaming PC to be running SteamOS instead of Windows. But I want to play Mass Effect and Fallout and Skyrim and Tomb Raider and Battlefronts and Uncharted and Assassin's Creed.
That's MY definition of a Casual Gamer - I get a relatively low number of games, but I play the hell out of them. I switched to PC because consoles became a really unfriendly environment for people like me, and Steam is just way the heck off. To play the games I want on PC right now I need both Steam and Origin. And if EA/ever/ lets their stuff go on Steam, well. It ain't going to be any time soon. SteamOS might be an OK platform eventually, but it's far from it now, and won't get to "OK" for a bit, either.
And, again, I would love for it to succeed, but they've been at this for years.
I keep saying this, every time SteamOS is mentioned. I would love it to work, I would love it to take off, and I would absolutely LOVE to be wrong about this, but performance is only one of the ways this thing is going to lag behind Windows. No way is Valve getting all the major studios to port their main games to Linux. SteamOS is going to be fine if you just need to have games and you don't really care which ones they are, and Steam does have a plethora of small/cheap games. But if you want Fallout 4, sorry.
And then people keep telling me I'm wrong and use some games I've never heard of as proof.
And, like I said, if SteamOS gains, uh, steam, and companies start making their big games available for them, I'll happily reconsider.
However, there are alternatives to Windows for gaming. Perhaps you've heard of consoles. And perhaps you've noticed games cost the same when available on multiple platforms.
There's definitely SOME escapism in gaming, but that's also why I read and watch movies. That said, all those things are designated for evenings after I've done everything else (well, except for reading, I kind of have a reading problem).
When I say "immersive" here I mean I've spent enough time in the game for it to be interesting. If I'm done with the game in a few hours... eh. Just not my thing. And that includes big titles. I hated God of War 3 because it was over in a few days and I had absolutely no desire to replay it. I loved the first The Force Unleashed because even though it was short-ish, it was fun to play over and over. I didn't like the second one because it was shorter and just annoying!
I recently was pretty damn bored and confined to the house due to illness so I did try some indy games recommended by friends - friends I met while gaming, I might add, so I figured I can trust their taste. I played Lifeless Planet, which has a lot of positive reviews. And it's very pretty. But it was basically a platform-jumping game which was just annoying, and the story... the story made no sense. $20 for something I was done with in two days and never want to play again.
I'm also playing Life is Strange. The story in that one is... so far, a bit better, but the game itself stresses me out and I can't connect to any of the characters.
Compare that to a Skyrim. I'm still playing that thing. In fact when I moved to PC I ended up rebuying it - mods make it virtually infinitely replayable.
I'm not just saying "no" without ever trying something. It's just not the kind of thing I like.
It seems to me like you have no idea of how things actually are right now but you really wanted to hate. Please, stop, you're hurting yourself.
Oh, well, I guess you've changed my life, and magically all the games I actually do play are now suddenly available on SteamOS, rather than... wait, let me count... zero of them.
Again, I am not, and never did say that nothing will be available on SteamOS. I'm saying a tiny fraction of AAA games will be. I'm saying there are entire studios that have no reason to support SteamOS. I'm saying that SteamOS is not right for me.
Look, if I'm wrong and SteamOS takes off? I can always install SteamOS on my gaming machine. Hell, I'd love to be wrong about this. But it's nowhere near there yet. If I installed SteamOS on my machine right now I would literally not be able to play any of the games I play on a regular basis right now. None. And not just the EA ones. And that will be true in 6 months, and probably in a year, and after that there'll still be games I want to play, but can't.
The difference is that these games will come out for Windows, which I can easily install on my gaming computer, well before they come out for SteamOS (if at all). And they'll want $60 for that version while the Windows version is $30.
Look, I know that if they set up a build chain, they can do rollouts for Linux with minimal effort. But I don't think they will do that.
I can't find this official announcement (just some references to it happening), but for the sake of argument lets assume it's there and easy to find. All this does is raise MORE issues.
First, this is not the first time we've heard a Linux version is coming (even officially) only to have it never happen.
Second, even when they do happen, they show up a year (or more!) later than any other version, and still cost the full-price even though they're half-price on all other platforms by now.
You obviously do not understand how it works. I never said they they can just build an app to PORT all of their games, the app would allow them to have their own "store" aka Origin.
They'd still have to port their games to SteamOS. And they won't. Again, zero incentive. Call it a chicken-and-egg thing if you want.
Slashdot Mirror
Been using them for so long, at this point going to the built-in Android keyboard would be switching.
So, what's a good alternative to Swiftkey?
Actually, I'm going to wait and see what happens. I use Swiftkey on my tablets (swype on my phones), and I'm not going to knee-jerk abandon it.
I walk my dog at an off-leash park every day, and in the dead of winter it gets pitch-dark here around 4:30pm. We have a light-up collar, but you can only see it from specific angles, so I used an arduino lilypad to add some lights to her jacket. The arduino board means I can make the lights be any colour I like, or even have patterns, and (most importantly) I can make them turn on automatically when it gets dark.
Well that'll learn ya.
I might just be tired, but it took me forever to figure out what a walking skyrocket is.
"Bloatware" would probably have been a better term to use.
I figure Raspberry charges them $20 per unit and gives us a free nice SD card. Now do you guys want to please stop ruining this with facts???
Shhhh! Don't ruin this! I want a free SD card!
Hey, free money. Not like the PI has any permanent storage so they'd just have to stick the file on some chip somewhere, where it can't really be accessed. Not that an .exe would even be executable.
Better yet - ship every Raspberry PI with an SD card labelled "Malware - Please execute immediately."
Set up a honeypot. Put a machine inside your network, and open some of the ports they're scanning on it. See what they're trying to do.
As a bonus, /if/ they do anything, they have now actually broken the law and you can get law enforcement to actually do something.
> Online play was free for PS3 and paid for Xbox 360. This generation Sony decided to start charging too.
And that's the point where the advantages of PC gaming outweighed the disadvantages for me. Up until that, I was willing to put up with consoles, but that was the last straw.
Like I said, I'd love to be wrong, and I'd LOVE my gaming PC to be running SteamOS instead of Windows. But I want to play Mass Effect and Fallout and Skyrim and Tomb Raider and Battlefronts and Uncharted and Assassin's Creed.
That's MY definition of a Casual Gamer - I get a relatively low number of games, but I play the hell out of them. I switched to PC because consoles became a really unfriendly environment for people like me, and Steam is just way the heck off. To play the games I want on PC right now I need both Steam and Origin. And if EA /ever/ lets their stuff go on Steam, well. It ain't going to be any time soon. SteamOS might be an OK platform eventually, but it's far from it now, and won't get to "OK" for a bit, either.
And, again, I would love for it to succeed, but they've been at this for years.
I keep saying this, every time SteamOS is mentioned. I would love it to work, I would love it to take off, and I would absolutely LOVE to be wrong about this, but performance is only one of the ways this thing is going to lag behind Windows. No way is Valve getting all the major studios to port their main games to Linux. SteamOS is going to be fine if you just need to have games and you don't really care which ones they are, and Steam does have a plethora of small/cheap games. But if you want Fallout 4, sorry.
And then people keep telling me I'm wrong and use some games I've never heard of as proof.
Any decent-sized city already has dozens of datacenters. Any large city probably has hundreds. Data centers are kind of like parking lots.
Ok, I'll admit that I'm probably wrong about that point.
And, like I said, if SteamOS gains, uh, steam, and companies start making their big games available for them, I'll happily reconsider.
However, there are alternatives to Windows for gaming. Perhaps you've heard of consoles. And perhaps you've noticed games cost the same when available on multiple platforms.
There's definitely SOME escapism in gaming, but that's also why I read and watch movies. That said, all those things are designated for evenings after I've done everything else (well, except for reading, I kind of have a reading problem).
When I say "immersive" here I mean I've spent enough time in the game for it to be interesting. If I'm done with the game in a few hours... eh. Just not my thing. And that includes big titles. I hated God of War 3 because it was over in a few days and I had absolutely no desire to replay it. I loved the first The Force Unleashed because even though it was short-ish, it was fun to play over and over. I didn't like the second one because it was shorter and just annoying!
I recently was pretty damn bored and confined to the house due to illness so I did try some indy games recommended by friends - friends I met while gaming, I might add, so I figured I can trust their taste. I played Lifeless Planet, which has a lot of positive reviews. And it's very pretty. But it was basically a platform-jumping game which was just annoying, and the story... the story made no sense. $20 for something I was done with in two days and never want to play again.
I'm also playing Life is Strange. The story in that one is... so far, a bit better, but the game itself stresses me out and I can't connect to any of the characters.
Compare that to a Skyrim. I'm still playing that thing. In fact when I moved to PC I ended up rebuying it - mods make it virtually infinitely replayable.
I'm not just saying "no" without ever trying something. It's just not the kind of thing I like.
Tell you what, when I can't get the next Elder Scrolls and Mass Effect games on PC, I'll buy a PS4 or whatever number it is.
Luckily, none of those make any games I'm interested in playing.
It's not about whether it works or not, it's about them being here at all (:
Oh, well, I guess you've changed my life, and magically all the games I actually do play are now suddenly available on SteamOS, rather than... wait, let me count... zero of them.
Again, I am not, and never did say that nothing will be available on SteamOS. I'm saying a tiny fraction of AAA games will be. I'm saying there are entire studios that have no reason to support SteamOS. I'm saying that SteamOS is not right for me.
Look, if I'm wrong and SteamOS takes off? I can always install SteamOS on my gaming machine. Hell, I'd love to be wrong about this. But it's nowhere near there yet. If I installed SteamOS on my machine right now I would literally not be able to play any of the games I play on a regular basis right now. None. And not just the EA ones. And that will be true in 6 months, and probably in a year, and after that there'll still be games I want to play, but can't.
The difference is that these games will come out for Windows, which I can easily install on my gaming computer, well before they come out for SteamOS (if at all). And they'll want $60 for that version while the Windows version is $30.
Look, I know that if they set up a build chain, they can do rollouts for Linux with minimal effort. But I don't think they will do that.
I don't think they believe they'll make more money than they'll have to invest in it.
I can't find this official announcement (just some references to it happening), but for the sake of argument lets assume it's there and easy to find. All this does is raise MORE issues.
First, this is not the first time we've heard a Linux version is coming (even officially) only to have it never happen.
Second, even when they do happen, they show up a year (or more!) later than any other version, and still cost the full-price even though they're half-price on all other platforms by now.
So yeah, not helping.
They'd still have to port their games to SteamOS. And they won't. Again, zero incentive. Call it a chicken-and-egg thing if you want.