I actually hate labels and kind of regret using that term, but I wanted to provide some context.
I/am/ a consumer of games. I pay for them, and I buy hardware to play them. When I say I'm a "casual" gamer I mean I don't go out there and buy every game ever made. They DO make a lot of games I like, an enjoy. I just don't want to pay $60 (or $40, or $30, or $20, or $15) for a game I'll only enjoy for like a day or two.
My friends who consider themselves "serious" gamers will just buy EVERY game. Whenever there's a Steam sale they go nuts. Not me. I'll happily pay $60 for a Skyrim or a Mass Effect or an Assassin's Creed - games I can play for weeks or months and have lots of replay value. And what I'm saying is that games like that are not showing up for SteamOS. I'm saying I love the idea of SteamOS and really, really wanted to use it and have been following it's development (albeit with extreme doubts) for years. It's just not something I can use for my gaming needs.
I'm not saying Valve need to cater to me. I'm just providing my perspective.
First of all, I've never even heard of some of those games. Second, fine, lets say 50% of... you know what? 60% of Big Games are available. I'm still sitting here not being able to play a bunch of the big ones.
Second, I don't see how EA could make an app that ports all their games to Linux.
And it doesn't matter if the games are on Steam. It matters if they're posted to SteamOS. EA has zero incentive to do that.
Yeah, but that's kind of the point - I need to have Steam running, and Origin running, and if I ever get a Ubisoft game I'll need THAT running, too...
I have a small keyboard and small mouse (I prefer that to an integrated touchpad). Doesn't matter if they're small, they're still here (; The real deal with that is mods and mod management. Mods were one of the big considerations about moving to PC so hell if I'm not going to use them!
I use a controller because it's really, really uncomfortable to use a keyboard+mouse in the living room (: I tried all kinds of different solutions for several months until I settled on just using the controller.
I knew this would be a sacrifice, but I was willing to live with it. Better than the nonsense subscription crap consoles started pulling...
I have done just that. And it actually works a lot of the time. But I still have to deal with drivers and updates and Windows weirdness. And I have to use Steam to start Origin games. And sometimes Steam takes too long to start and other things get in the way and stay on the screen in FRONT of Big Picture mode. And no matter what I do, I still need to have a keyboard and mouse in the living room, which annoys me greatly.
I recently moved from console gaming to PC gaming. And I really, really wanted to move to SteamOS because I do NOT want to deal with Windows when I want to simply sprawl out on the sofa and play a game.
And I waited ever since they announced the thing to see how it does. The thing is, they're never getting those big titles to work natively on Linux. Small games? Sure. "Indy" games? Maybe. But the big ones? No way.
I consider myself a casual gamer (if anything). I play those games where you can get immersed for a few months. I don't play the little and indy games. And they will/never/ get a Skyrim ported to Linux. Or Fallout 4, or Mass Effect, or Assassin's Creed. Furthermore, there's a very spotty record of EA games showing up on Steam to begin with - and why would they when they have their own service?
SteamOS (and other Linux, by extension) have a lot of games now, but they're mostly not very good ones, and not the big titles. If that's what you're into then that's great, but it's no competition at all to Windows or Playstation/XBOX.
And yeah I know there's in-house streaming, but that defeats the point of using SteamOS in the first place.
A lot of people automatically compare Photoshop to GIMP, but ignore some of the tools that come with Photoshop, such as Adobe Camera Raw.
I've tried several different RAW processors for Linux, and none of them even came CLOSE to ACR. Not by a long shot.
I've used GIMP since version 0.54, sometime back in the '90s. It was an awesome tool back then. It's still a very impressive program. Then I did a pretty big year-long photography project, and some time in the middle of it I tried the trial version of Photoshop. The workflow improvement going from Shotwell (or whatever) -> UFRaw (or rawtherapee or dcraw) ->GIMP, to Bridge->ACR->Photoshop was unbelievable. Again, at this point I'd been using GIMP for well over a decade, and going to Adobe's tools made my life incredibly easier and more effective and I was getting much, much better results. GIMP was always awkward to use, whereas Photoshop was almost completely intuitive.
*sigh* your mistake is referring to these things as "phones".
It's a mobile pocket computer. It also happens to be connected to the sum-total of Human knowledge. When I was a kid that was a fevered dream of hardcore nerds who read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We thought we'd be carrying these large-paperback sized devices in satchels and have a chording keyboard in our pocket.
Seriously. These things are insanely amazing. They are marvels of technology. if you want a pure "phone" then yeah, stay away from them. That's not what they're for. Yes, they are communication devices but they're sooo much more.
If that means I have to put it on a pad when I'm at home, I can absolutely, 100% live with that.
I probably went "scp -r directory new_server:direcory/"
Yeah, the devs had full run of that place. In fact, a LOT of people at that place had root access. To the point where I would go around the place when I'd stay late and pull the damn post-its with the root password off peoples' cube walls.
And yeah, I remember it. Because, first, it WAS a defining moment. And second, I kinda remember a LOT of stuff.
Like I said in response to many... many other comments, this was about 20 years ago, and I'm likely wrong about using rsync - it's just that that's what I'd (obviously) use now. Chances are I just didn't know about it back then and was doing a straight scp dump.
> I'm gonna have to go against the chorus and lay the blame at your feet, honestly.
That pretty much HAS been the chorus.
And I never said I wasn't (at least) partially to blame - I definitely had a blind-spot.
Also, had a new sysadmin been hired, he'd have no reason to turn the old machine on. Other people WERE aware of what was going on, including the people who would've trained a new guy. What's more, that machine was leased and would have been returned within a week or two, so he couldn't have repurposed it. And he couldn't have pulled any storage from it because that was part of the lease. And even if he could, it was a Sun box and the new one was an AIX box, so stuff wouldn't just run.
And here's another thing... say the new guy gets hired, never touches that machine because he's been told it's being returned in a few days. And then one of the devs turns it on and a week's work gets erased. They would've still blamed the new sysadmin even though he had nothing to do with it.
If you want funny, I actually knew the guy who ended up replacing me through a local Linux user's group. I know he was plagued by the same kind of crap. He tried to update the remote connections to use ssh rather than telnet and almost got fired for THAT.
Yup, and as I said to the other people who said that very sane thing "you are right, and I was likely wrong about using rsync. This was 20 years ago and I probably didn't know how to use rsync yet."
As I've mentioned, this was about 20 years ago, so I can't really remember it 100%.
However, this was one of those shops that started with about 10 employees, and even though by then it was 200+, it still operated as if it was a small, small company. The head devs were part of the original 10, and they were like gods. They had full access to EVERYTHING. Including root access to all the servers. They were basically allowed to do whatever they wanted.
If something went wrong where they and someone else was involved, it was never their fault.
This was 20 years ago, and in a company that still thought it was very small even though it was medium-sized. The devs ere gods. They outranked me in every way and had root access to all my servers.
You know the old saying, "make something idiot-proof and someone will come up with a better idiot."
They'd have plugged it back in. Again, the guy physically went into the server room and pushed a button.
I certainly should've disabled the cron job or, better yet (as pointed out by AC down there) have known what rsync actually was and used that - I know I said I did in the original post but in retrospect I couldn't have as it wouldn't have overwritten everything. This was about 20 years ago...
They weren't supposed to, but the head developers were like gods at that place. They had the root passowrds and I wasn't allowed to restrict them in any way.
It stemmed from them being among the original 10 people when the company started, and even though the place was now a 200+ employee organisation, in some ways they still ran it like 10-person operation.
I did vocally complain about this. They quite often went in and overrode stuff I did.
Good call... this was about 20 years ago, and it's not likely that I used rsync (not sure I knew how to do that back then).
My memories of the event are not... perfect. But it's likely that I just used scp to dump entire directories. Couldn't have been using rsync because, as you say, it wouldn't have one as much damage.
I don't know what monetary cost they assigned to this, but this is the one I got in the most trouble for.
Frankly, it was something I got blamed for. I guess I can take partial responsibility. You guys tell me.
I was the only UNIX guy at this place. We were moving our Main Internal Server to a newer machine. I had set up a cron job to rsync all user data nightly, so that when we transition over the rsync would be faster.
So, the big day comes. I come in on a weekend, do the final rsync, change some DNS entries, shut down old machine, bring new machine up. No problem.
Next day everyone is working happily, everything is working smoothly, no worries.
Or so I thought. Turns out the main developer wanted something off the old server, so he turned it back on to copy his files... and then left it up.
So, during the night, the thing automatically rsyncs and overwrites an entire day's work for about 80 people.
Definitely partially my fault for not disabling the cron job, but I was the only one who got in any kind of trouble at all for this (to the extent of almost losing my job, and frankly that was the catalyst for me leaving that place).
Slashdot Mirror
There's actually no official announcement for it.
I actually hate labels and kind of regret using that term, but I wanted to provide some context.
I /am/ a consumer of games. I pay for them, and I buy hardware to play them. When I say I'm a "casual" gamer I mean I don't go out there and buy every game ever made. They DO make a lot of games I like, an enjoy. I just don't want to pay $60 (or $40, or $30, or $20, or $15) for a game I'll only enjoy for like a day or two.
My friends who consider themselves "serious" gamers will just buy EVERY game. Whenever there's a Steam sale they go nuts. Not me. I'll happily pay $60 for a Skyrim or a Mass Effect or an Assassin's Creed - games I can play for weeks or months and have lots of replay value. And what I'm saying is that games like that are not showing up for SteamOS. I'm saying I love the idea of SteamOS and really, really wanted to use it and have been following it's development (albeit with extreme doubts) for years. It's just not something I can use for my gaming needs.
I'm not saying Valve need to cater to me. I'm just providing my perspective.
First of all, I've never even heard of some of those games. Second, fine, lets say 50% of... you know what? 60% of Big Games are available. I'm still sitting here not being able to play a bunch of the big ones.
Second, I don't see how EA could make an app that ports all their games to Linux.
And it doesn't matter if the games are on Steam. It matters if they're posted to SteamOS. EA has zero incentive to do that.
Yeah, but that's kind of the point - I need to have Steam running, and Origin running, and if I ever get a Ubisoft game I'll need THAT running, too...
I have a small keyboard and small mouse (I prefer that to an integrated touchpad). Doesn't matter if they're small, they're still here (; The real deal with that is mods and mod management. Mods were one of the big considerations about moving to PC so hell if I'm not going to use them!
I use a controller because it's really, really uncomfortable to use a keyboard+mouse in the living room (: I tried all kinds of different solutions for several months until I settled on just using the controller.
I knew this would be a sacrifice, but I was willing to live with it. Better than the nonsense subscription crap consoles started pulling...
The Witcher 3 isn't available for SteamOS, so whether it's big or not is a moot point.
I have done just that. And it actually works a lot of the time. But I still have to deal with drivers and updates and Windows weirdness. And I have to use Steam to start Origin games. And sometimes Steam takes too long to start and other things get in the way and stay on the screen in FRONT of Big Picture mode. And no matter what I do, I still need to have a keyboard and mouse in the living room, which annoys me greatly.
I recently moved from console gaming to PC gaming. And I really, really wanted to move to SteamOS because I do NOT want to deal with Windows when I want to simply sprawl out on the sofa and play a game.
And I waited ever since they announced the thing to see how it does. The thing is, they're never getting those big titles to work natively on Linux. Small games? Sure. "Indy" games? Maybe. But the big ones? No way.
I consider myself a casual gamer (if anything). I play those games where you can get immersed for a few months. I don't play the little and indy games. And they will /never/ get a Skyrim ported to Linux. Or Fallout 4, or Mass Effect, or Assassin's Creed. Furthermore, there's a very spotty record of EA games showing up on Steam to begin with - and why would they when they have their own service?
SteamOS (and other Linux, by extension) have a lot of games now, but they're mostly not very good ones, and not the big titles. If that's what you're into then that's great, but it's no competition at all to Windows or Playstation/XBOX.
And yeah I know there's in-house streaming, but that defeats the point of using SteamOS in the first place.
A lot of people automatically compare Photoshop to GIMP, but ignore some of the tools that come with Photoshop, such as Adobe Camera Raw.
I've tried several different RAW processors for Linux, and none of them even came CLOSE to ACR. Not by a long shot.
I've used GIMP since version 0.54, sometime back in the '90s. It was an awesome tool back then. It's still a very impressive program. Then I did a pretty big year-long photography project, and some time in the middle of it I tried the trial version of Photoshop. The workflow improvement going from Shotwell (or whatever) -> UFRaw (or rawtherapee or dcraw) ->GIMP, to Bridge->ACR->Photoshop was unbelievable. Again, at this point I'd been using GIMP for well over a decade, and going to Adobe's tools made my life incredibly easier and more effective and I was getting much, much better results. GIMP was always awkward to use, whereas Photoshop was almost completely intuitive.
But Linux has nothing that can compare to ACR.
*sigh* your mistake is referring to these things as "phones".
It's a mobile pocket computer. It also happens to be connected to the sum-total of Human knowledge. When I was a kid that was a fevered dream of hardcore nerds who read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We thought we'd be carrying these large-paperback sized devices in satchels and have a chording keyboard in our pocket.
Seriously. These things are insanely amazing. They are marvels of technology. if you want a pure "phone" then yeah, stay away from them. That's not what they're for. Yes, they are communication devices but they're sooo much more.
If that means I have to put it on a pad when I'm at home, I can absolutely, 100% live with that.
I probably went "scp -r directory new_server:direcory/"
Yeah, the devs had full run of that place. In fact, a LOT of people at that place had root access. To the point where I would go around the place when I'd stay late and pull the damn post-its with the root password off peoples' cube walls.
And yeah, I remember it. Because, first, it WAS a defining moment. And second, I kinda remember a LOT of stuff.
Like I said in response to many... many other comments, this was about 20 years ago, and I'm likely wrong about using rsync - it's just that that's what I'd (obviously) use now. Chances are I just didn't know about it back then and was doing a straight scp dump.
> I'm gonna have to go against the chorus and lay the blame at your feet, honestly.
That pretty much HAS been the chorus.
And I never said I wasn't (at least) partially to blame - I definitely had a blind-spot.
Also, had a new sysadmin been hired, he'd have no reason to turn the old machine on. Other people WERE aware of what was going on, including the people who would've trained a new guy. What's more, that machine was leased and would have been returned within a week or two, so he couldn't have repurposed it. And he couldn't have pulled any storage from it because that was part of the lease. And even if he could, it was a Sun box and the new one was an AIX box, so stuff wouldn't just run.
And here's another thing... say the new guy gets hired, never touches that machine because he's been told it's being returned in a few days. And then one of the devs turns it on and a week's work gets erased. They would've still blamed the new sysadmin even though he had nothing to do with it.
If you want funny, I actually knew the guy who ended up replacing me through a local Linux user's group. I know he was plagued by the same kind of crap. He tried to update the remote connections to use ssh rather than telnet and almost got fired for THAT.
This was not a good SysAdmin environment.
> Then there are stupid user tricks - like jamming an RJ-45 connector into an RJ-11 jack.
That's... actually impressive...
Yup, and as I said to the other people who said that very sane thing "you are right, and I was likely wrong about using rsync. This was 20 years ago and I probably didn't know how to use rsync yet."
I believe they were looking for old versions of some files, possibly from directories they never asked to be rsynced.
And, again, 20 years ago. I have definitely learned my lessons AGES since then (:
As I've mentioned, this was about 20 years ago, so I can't really remember it 100%.
However, this was one of those shops that started with about 10 employees, and even though by then it was 200+, it still operated as if it was a small, small company. The head devs were part of the original 10, and they were like gods. They had full access to EVERYTHING. Including root access to all the servers. They were basically allowed to do whatever they wanted.
If something went wrong where they and someone else was involved, it was never their fault.
*laughs*
This was 20 years ago, and in a company that still thought it was very small even though it was medium-sized. The devs ere gods. They outranked me in every way and had root access to all my servers.
You know the old saying, "make something idiot-proof and someone will come up with a better idiot."
They'd have plugged it back in. Again, the guy physically went into the server room and pushed a button.
I certainly should've disabled the cron job or, better yet (as pointed out by AC down there) have known what rsync actually was and used that - I know I said I did in the original post but in retrospect I couldn't have as it wouldn't have overwritten everything. This was about 20 years ago...
They weren't supposed to, but the head developers were like gods at that place. They had the root passowrds and I wasn't allowed to restrict them in any way.
It stemmed from them being among the original 10 people when the company started, and even though the place was now a 200+ employee organisation, in some ways they still ran it like 10-person operation.
I did vocally complain about this. They quite often went in and overrode stuff I did.
Good call... this was about 20 years ago, and it's not likely that I used rsync (not sure I knew how to do that back then).
My memories of the event are not... perfect. But it's likely that I just used scp to dump entire directories. Couldn't have been using rsync because, as you say, it wouldn't have one as much damage.
I don't know what monetary cost they assigned to this, but this is the one I got in the most trouble for.
Frankly, it was something I got blamed for. I guess I can take partial responsibility. You guys tell me.
I was the only UNIX guy at this place. We were moving our Main Internal Server to a newer machine. I had set up a cron job to rsync all user data nightly, so that when we transition over the rsync would be faster.
So, the big day comes. I come in on a weekend, do the final rsync, change some DNS entries, shut down old machine, bring new machine up. No problem.
Next day everyone is working happily, everything is working smoothly, no worries.
Or so I thought. Turns out the main developer wanted something off the old server, so he turned it back on to copy his files... and then left it up.
So, during the night, the thing automatically rsyncs and overwrites an entire day's work for about 80 people.
Definitely partially my fault for not disabling the cron job, but I was the only one who got in any kind of trouble at all for this (to the extent of almost losing my job, and frankly that was the catalyst for me leaving that place).
> Carly would probably lay off Congress
See, that I could actually get behind.
How is it lesbian sex when one of them is a man?
I think you should run.
Seriously, can't do any worse, right?
I hope you brought something to read, because you'll be waiting a loooooong time.