"If I write a piece of code that helps my employer do something, I get paid for the amount of time I worked on it."
That's because you've agreed to a work-for-hire situation with your employer. If you write a piece of code and sell it yourself, you will get paid every time the software sells.
Just because you chose to write your code on a work-for-hire basis it doesn't mean that everyone should be a salary slave.
This is no different than you and your code. You can own your work if you want, or you can sell your labor if you want. Your choice.
"The point is - nothing seems much better in the user experience than before, for the vast majority of things we do - and that includes MacOS X, to my thinking."
Pre-emptive multi-tasking on desktop operating systems is your big answer. OS X introduced it to Apple. Windows NT/2000/XP introduced it to the PC.
There is also faster search and better file browsing. The Windows Start button and Task Bar and the Mac Dock are also huge.
Think of the benefit of Optical/Laser mice that don't require frequent cleaning and very specific surfaces to work properly.
The best UI improvements are always difficult to identify because once you start using them, it becomes so natural that you quickly forget that you never had it.
"From what I've seen, Apple has been quite responsible with fixing found vulnerabilities: turn around times, etc. More-so than that other guy. So, I can't really complain."
Apple's time to patch was about twice as long as Microsoft's in 2006. From the looks of things, they may be working hard on improving that.
Apple has historically been terribly irresponsible with found vulnerabilities. This article says this is the first exploit fixed that hasn't been logged on the MOAB project.
Read up the MOAB. The MOAB project was started by security researchers who decided to release their findings publicly (and not contact Apple beforehand giving them time to fix the vulnerability before it becomes publicly known) because they got mad when Apple outright denied some existing vulnerabilities they found.
You are incorrect. Apple has a terrible track record when it comes to handling vulnerabilities when compared to the other guy. It looks like they are making progress.
Really, you have PS2 games on multiple DVDs and you have Oblivion on one. I think some folks just are better at getting a lot of quality content onto one disc... or at least try harder.
Those PS2 games you speak of span multiple DVDs because of video cut scenes. Nowadays, the cut scenes are rendered in 3d as scripted gameplay.
They started pimping cinematics and screens in 2004, well before the Xbox 360 was released, as an exclusive on the Xbox 360 platform. Now, in the middle of 2007 it is a PS3 exclusive. Any company claims you hear about why it is now a PS3 exclusive is going to ignore all the internal money, development and political issues that cause it.
And when Wardevil finally *doesn't* get released, you'll be back to a total of 0 games that were slated for Xbox 360/PS3 and ended up PS3 only.
"Music speaks to your soul. People don't like to rent their soul. They prefer to own it."
The entire concept of 'owning' music is terribly wrong and a sad byproduct of consumerism.
Music should be enjoyed, celebrated and appreciated, not collected like baseball cards. But, whatever, some people are collectors at heart. It seems like people here need to get out and go to some concerts.
As long as I can listen to any music I want when I want, at no extra cost, what more can I ask for? What more can anyone ask for?
"Music speaks to your soul. People don't like to rent their soul. They prefer to own it."
Art speaks to the soul. Art is a physical, visual or aural manifestation of feelings and thoughts. In other words, art is a concept, an idea.
And here we are, on Slashdot, a crowd that constantly crows about how ideas want to be free, but music, a form of an idea, should be owned. Nice.
On any device that plays DRM 10 Windows Media files.
"what happens if the service is shut down?"
I go to Rhapsody or Yahoo or some other subscription service. That's like asking what if Netflix goes out of business. The answer is that you go to Blockbuster's online service. It's not like if Apple goes out of business and I'm left with $5,000 worth of DRM wrapped files that won't play anywhere.
"how do you get napster in your car?"
Napster works with any DRM 10 compatible media player. That includes all of Creative's iPod alternatives and a bunch of media cell phones, all of which can be played in a car.
"5000 dollars would mean about 350 hours a year in songs that you never heard before."
Since I have been a Napster subscriber...yeah. That estimate may be off, but not by much.
For Jobs to be right, he'd have to explain away the popularity of Netflix, on demand cable and Blockbuster.
Sure, lots of people buy DVDs, but renting movies is clearly something that consumers want.
It will be the same with music.
The danger in the burgeoning online music world is that it is possible that the subscription model could be crushed. Just like the MPAA prefers people to buy DVDs instead of subscribe to Netflix, the RIAA prefers people to buy digital downloads rather than rent them.
For such a powerful person in the online music world to simply dismiss subscription music should piss the hell out of./ers. Instead, they squelch that idea by modding it down out of a kneejerk reaction to someone who does two things wrong - 1. says something negative about Apple/Jobs and 2. says something positive about DRM.
He has a habit of making wrong-headed and inflammatory statements like this.
Recently he dismissed cell phone carriers as "commodities."
Now he's dismissing subscription based music as something people don't want.
Well, I want subscription music! It's great that people who want to pay $.99 a song get it DRM-free. But subscription based services will require DRM. I pay $15/mo and listen to anything I want with Napster. That's $180/yr or a meager 180 iTunes songs. I currently listen to Napster about 2 hours a day at work and I listen to it at home, in the gym and in the car. I discover new music on a near daily basis. I love that for the price of a CD, I get to listen to whatever I want, whenever I want. I would have paid probably $5,000 to iTunes to listen to the music I've listened to on Napster. Screw that!
Subscription music services are rarely used for the same reason that nobody has a Mac. Everyone owns and iPod and subscription based software like Napster and Yahoo and Rhapsody won't work with the iPod. Why get Napster if it won't work with your music player? Similarly, everyone owns a PC and popular software won't work on a Mac. Why get a Mac if your favorite games won't work on it?
As bad as a monopoly as Microsoft in the OS market has been, Apple controlling digital music will be 10 times worse. It's always been Jobs' way or the highway. It's one thing when it was just the cultists that had to deal with it. When it's the whole world, it won't be pretty.
Since the availability of the Nvidia 8800 GTS 320, there is no such thing as a solid DX9 card.
Buy a DX10 card. They do DX9 games faster than any DX9 cards available at each price point.
Nvidia's DX10 line starts at under $100. You don't need DX10 to use a DX10 compatible card.
Also, games that support DX10 will also support DX9 for a long time because it will take years before developers are confident that almost all of their potential customers have DX10 compatible cards, let alone Vista.
Your experiences were not unique. At the height of popular open-source zealotry, Mozilla was, at one point, the poster-boy for the failed OSS. Now, as Firefox, it's an amazing project.
Nobody can reasonably argue that Firefox 1.0 was better than IE. But it has been worked on tirelessly since then and at this point, it is a more advanced and better browser than IE. Browsers are mature enough, that most end users won't notice any of the features that Firefox has on IE. More so than ever before, especially now that Flash/JS is used for RIAs instead of ActiveX, you can browse using the browser of your choice and the experience is virtually indistinguishable.
Phoenix (then Firebird, then Firefox) really was an appropriate name for the project. I can't think of any other situation where a project that was such a mess, such a failure, had this sort of turnaround.
1. Windows does legacy software support fairly well. Apple simply doesn't do legacy software support at all.
Many corporations run run software that is 10, 15, 20 years old. Strong legacy support is a must for many enterprise desktops. Today, many companies run apps built for Win95 that still work on XP and would likely even work on Vista. Apple never had to give the kind of legacy software support Microsoft provides simply because their computers aren't in an enterprise environment. For Apple, there currently isn't a need for a consumer to run a 10 year old app to justify the kind of expense it would take to ensure that the next OS can do that. Windows developed subsystems so that Win 3.1 programs would run natively in Win95, despite the fact that Win95 was a completely different OS. Similar thing happened when Win98 turned to Win2k/XP and now again with Vista. Apple's approach to legacy software is to say "fuck it, let's emulate it." They make so damn many changes to their OS that older software has problems running on newer OSes and newer software has problems running on older OSes. To run in a real enterprise environment Apple would have to rethink the way they develop their OS.
2. Apple isn't currently able to provide the tech support that would be required.
Bitch all you want about Dell's support, but Apple is currently unable to provide anything close to what Dell does for corporate clients. Even if Apple were to go balls out in pitching to corporations, it would still take years to get to where Dell is now.
Legacy hardware and app support is hard stuff. If Apple had to do the kinds of things that Microsoft has to do for their enterprise customers, the cost and time to develop their OS would grow exponentially. Despite MS' billions of dollars, tremendous market demand and very smart people, enterprise migration from an older Windows to a newer one is still incredibly expensive and painful. MS has spent the last 10 years getting better and better at this and all things considered, they are somewhere between mediocre and decent at it.
Apple just doesn't do that kind of support. To be "enterprise-worthy" they will have to. And right now they have zero expertise and zero budget for it.
So yeah, the guy who wrote that article is correct. Apple computers as enterprise computers are just around the corner...I mean, Apple computers are spec'ed out like PCs now. That's all you need, right?
"My guess is that Nikons definition of 'bona fide software companies' is 'software companies able to pay a lot for their proprietary SDK'."
Nikon does not charge anyone for the SDK. While they make a big deal about 'bona fide' developers in the announcement, I've seen a couple of folks in photography forums who got the SDK from Nikon for no other reason than to toy around with it.
Not only does Nikon not charge for the SDK, Adobe doesn't even use it in their ACR software! That's actually what this whole hubbub is about - Adobe doesn't want to use the Nikon SDK (they haven't ever used it) in their RAW capture plug-in.
The data recording the white balance setting is encrypted but the encryption has already been broken by a 3rd party RAW conversion software company. Adobe does not want to risk the legal liability that would come with their plugin breaking the encryption.
Remember, open source does not necessarily mean free as in beer or free as in speech. A lot of business software licenses allow purchasers of the software access to the source code, but it strictly forbids redistribution of the code. Such a license is open source yet not free as in beer and certainly not free as in speech.
Your best bet is to give the client the source code. You need to choose whether or not you want to retain rights to the source code, or give all rights to the client. Most contract programming jobs I've ever heard of require that the client not only gets the binaries and documentation (and sometimes training) but also the source code and complete rights to the source. That way, you don't depend on you for incrimental improvements. They can hire their own developers to do that if they have the source.
Honestly, if this is a custom job that is likely only of interest to the client (and perhaps the client's business competition), you are ripping them off by not giving them the source. But again, it's your job to choose whether or not you want to retain the copyright to the code for yourself, or give all rights to the client.
Kohan is infact a very good game.
on
Kohan for Linux
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Kohan is a very good game
Kohan is considered a strong game among the RTS (real time strategy) gaming crowd, but
it has not attained the popularity of Starcraft or Age of Kings. This is due in part because
of having a new and inexperienced publisher, Strategy First. The publisher never marketed
Kohan heavily. Strategy First was the publishing company responsible for the WWII online
debacle - they don't have the best track record as a publisher. Members of the online
gaming community will be very familiar with this.
Also, Kohan is lacking in the graphics department when compared to their peers. It doesn't
look any better than Age of Kings or Starcraft. Some very good 3d RTS games are just
around the corner, including Warcraft III, Age of Mythology and Empire Earth. Kohan is a
day late and a dollar short in a department that is really a must among the people who
really matter - the people in the middle of the curve who buy a lot of games and are not
hardcore players.
For the hardcore player Kohan is one of the most unique and best RTS games ever. It is
not a clone of more popular RTS games at all. The economic model is unique in a good
way. Most other games have over simplied economic models (a good example being
starcraft) or an economic model that requires too much micromanagement (a good example
being Age of Empires series). The kohan model requires no micromanagement and is
complex enough to be very rewarding. The military model adds in aspects of moral and
costs of transportation. Slain troops are automatically replaced. This feature alone pushes
the economic model to a class above all others. In stead of a static buy stuff/earn stuff
model, there is a flow. Costs are higher than income, or costs are lower than income. In
my opinion that puts a Kohan feature at the front of the future of RTS gaming.
Unfortunately, Kohan never took off on the windows platform. It deservedly earned rave
reviews. It tanked among the online community and the typical community. It was
marketed poorly and the graphics technology are below par for it's time. On mrfixitonline,
soon to be rtscentral, a place for the most hardcore RTS gamers, our Kohan forums are near
dead while after almost 2 years our Age of Kings forum is still rocking solid.
Ok, I'm going to give a shameless plug: I've been volunteering time for an RTS (real time
strategy) gaming network for over a year now.
mrfixitonline has really taken off. We do neat things like run tournaments and online
gaming events, RTS news, expert strategies and forums. We don't make any money doing
this. (The site loses a ton), but it is incredible fun.
It is nice to see Kohan make it to Linux. I am a gamer. I also love Linux. I have never
played a Loki game in my life. I will buy Kohan when it comes out for Linux. It is as simple as that. If Loki games keeps coming out with strong titles and gaming hardware like soundcards and graphics cards are better supported, people like me will become converts. Kohan is a very strong RTS game. If any of you guys are interested in Kohan, drop by kohan.rtscentral.com and check out what we have to offer for the game. I hate to have to say this, but while still viewable, the Kohan site doesn't display properly under Moz. Grrr.....
Slashdot Mirror
Apple bundles iTunes, Safari, Mac Mail, iChat and Quicktime with OS X.
But nobody complains.
If Microsoft can't bundle those apps, nobody else should be able to either.
"If I write a piece of code that helps my employer do something, I get paid for the amount of time I worked on it."
That's because you've agreed to a work-for-hire situation with your employer. If you write a piece of code and sell it yourself, you will get paid every time the software sells.
Just because you chose to write your code on a work-for-hire basis it doesn't mean that everyone should be a salary slave.
This is no different than you and your code. You can own your work if you want, or you can sell your labor if you want. Your choice.
Such a solution exists. It's called Napster. Or Rhapsody. Or Yahoo Launch.
I love it. And when I talk about how much better it is than iTunes on Slashdot I get modded down.
"The point is - nothing seems much better in the user experience than before, for the vast majority of things we do - and that includes MacOS X, to my thinking."
Pre-emptive multi-tasking on desktop operating systems is your big answer. OS X introduced it to Apple. Windows NT/2000/XP introduced it to the PC.
There is also faster search and better file browsing. The Windows Start button and Task Bar and the Mac Dock are also huge.
Think of the benefit of Optical/Laser mice that don't require frequent cleaning and very specific surfaces to work properly.
The best UI improvements are always difficult to identify because once you start using them, it becomes so natural that you quickly forget that you never had it.
"From what I've seen, Apple has been quite responsible with fixing found vulnerabilities: turn around times, etc. More-so than that other guy. So, I can't really complain."
Apple's time to patch was about twice as long as Microsoft's in 2006. From the looks of things, they may be working hard on improving that.
Apple has historically been terribly irresponsible with found vulnerabilities. This article says this is the first exploit fixed that hasn't been logged on the MOAB project.
Read up the MOAB. The MOAB project was started by security researchers who decided to release their findings publicly (and not contact Apple beforehand giving them time to fix the vulnerability before it becomes publicly known) because they got mad when Apple outright denied some existing vulnerabilities they found.
You are incorrect. Apple has a terrible track record when it comes to handling vulnerabilities when compared to the other guy. It looks like they are making progress.
Wardevil is vaporware.
They started pimping cinematics and screens in 2004, well before the Xbox 360 was released, as an exclusive on the Xbox 360 platform. Now, in the middle of 2007 it is a PS3 exclusive. Any company claims you hear about why it is now a PS3 exclusive is going to ignore all the internal money, development and political issues that cause it.
And when Wardevil finally *doesn't* get released, you'll be back to a total of 0 games that were slated for Xbox 360/PS3 and ended up PS3 only.
"Music speaks to your soul. People don't like to rent their soul. They prefer to own it."
The entire concept of 'owning' music is terribly wrong and a sad byproduct of consumerism.
Music should be enjoyed, celebrated and appreciated, not collected like baseball cards. But, whatever, some people are collectors at heart. It seems like people here need to get out and go to some concerts.
As long as I can listen to any music I want when I want, at no extra cost, what more can I ask for? What more can anyone ask for?
"Music speaks to your soul. People don't like to rent their soul. They prefer to own it."
Art speaks to the soul. Art is a physical, visual or aural manifestation of feelings and thoughts. In other words, art is a concept, an idea.
And here we are, on Slashdot, a crowd that constantly crows about how ideas want to be free, but music, a form of an idea, should be owned. Nice.
"where can you play the music?"
On any device that plays DRM 10 Windows Media files.
"what happens if the service is shut down?"
I go to Rhapsody or Yahoo or some other subscription service. That's like asking what if Netflix goes out of business. The answer is that you go to Blockbuster's online service. It's not like if Apple goes out of business and I'm left with $5,000 worth of DRM wrapped files that won't play anywhere.
"how do you get napster in your car?"
Napster works with any DRM 10 compatible media player. That includes all of Creative's iPod alternatives and a bunch of media cell phones, all of which can be played in a car.
"5000 dollars would mean about 350 hours a year in songs that you never heard before."
Since I have been a Napster subscriber...yeah. That estimate may be off, but not by much.
For Jobs to be right, he'd have to explain away the popularity of Netflix, on demand cable and Blockbuster.
./ers. Instead, they squelch that idea by modding it down out of a kneejerk reaction to someone who does two things wrong - 1. says something negative about Apple/Jobs and 2. says something positive about DRM.
Sure, lots of people buy DVDs, but renting movies is clearly something that consumers want.
It will be the same with music.
The danger in the burgeoning online music world is that it is possible that the subscription model could be crushed. Just like the MPAA prefers people to buy DVDs instead of subscribe to Netflix, the RIAA prefers people to buy digital downloads rather than rent them.
For such a powerful person in the online music world to simply dismiss subscription music should piss the hell out of
He has a habit of making wrong-headed and inflammatory statements like this.
Recently he dismissed cell phone carriers as "commodities."
Now he's dismissing subscription based music as something people don't want.
Well, I want subscription music! It's great that people who want to pay $.99 a song get it DRM-free. But subscription based services will require DRM. I pay $15/mo and listen to anything I want with Napster. That's $180/yr or a meager 180 iTunes songs. I currently listen to Napster about 2 hours a day at work and I listen to it at home, in the gym and in the car. I discover new music on a near daily basis. I love that for the price of a CD, I get to listen to whatever I want, whenever I want. I would have paid probably $5,000 to iTunes to listen to the music I've listened to on Napster. Screw that!
Subscription music services are rarely used for the same reason that nobody has a Mac. Everyone owns and iPod and subscription based software like Napster and Yahoo and Rhapsody won't work with the iPod. Why get Napster if it won't work with your music player? Similarly, everyone owns a PC and popular software won't work on a Mac. Why get a Mac if your favorite games won't work on it?
As bad as a monopoly as Microsoft in the OS market has been, Apple controlling digital music will be 10 times worse. It's always been Jobs' way or the highway. It's one thing when it was just the cultists that had to deal with it. When it's the whole world, it won't be pretty.
Your experiences were not unique. At the height of popular open-source zealotry, Mozilla was, at one point, the poster-boy for the failed OSS. Now, as Firefox, it's an amazing project.
Nobody can reasonably argue that Firefox 1.0 was better than IE. But it has been worked on tirelessly since then and at this point, it is a more advanced and better browser than IE. Browsers are mature enough, that most end users won't notice any of the features that Firefox has on IE. More so than ever before, especially now that Flash/JS is used for RIAs instead of ActiveX, you can browse using the browser of your choice and the experience is virtually indistinguishable.
Phoenix (then Firebird, then Firefox) really was an appropriate name for the project. I can't think of any other situation where a project that was such a mess, such a failure, had this sort of turnaround.
"Market research numbers are BS that can be, and often are, manipulated by analysts to say what every the analyst wants, and here is how!"
Yes. He makes that point quite effectively by manipulating research numbers to make his own outlandish and bogus claims.
1. Windows does legacy software support fairly well. Apple simply doesn't do legacy software support at all.
Many corporations run run software that is 10, 15, 20 years old. Strong legacy support is a must for many enterprise desktops. Today, many companies run apps built for Win95 that still work on XP and would likely even work on Vista. Apple never had to give the kind of legacy software support Microsoft provides simply because their computers aren't in an enterprise environment. For Apple, there currently isn't a need for a consumer to run a 10 year old app to justify the kind of expense it would take to ensure that the next OS can do that. Windows developed subsystems so that Win 3.1 programs would run natively in Win95, despite the fact that Win95 was a completely different OS. Similar thing happened when Win98 turned to Win2k/XP and now again with Vista. Apple's approach to legacy software is to say "fuck it, let's emulate it." They make so damn many changes to their OS that older software has problems running on newer OSes and newer software has problems running on older OSes. To run in a real enterprise environment Apple would have to rethink the way they develop their OS.
2. Apple isn't currently able to provide the tech support that would be required.
Bitch all you want about Dell's support, but Apple is currently unable to provide anything close to what Dell does for corporate clients. Even if Apple were to go balls out in pitching to corporations, it would still take years to get to where Dell is now.
Legacy hardware and app support is hard stuff. If Apple had to do the kinds of things that Microsoft has to do for their enterprise customers, the cost and time to develop their OS would grow exponentially. Despite MS' billions of dollars, tremendous market demand and very smart people, enterprise migration from an older Windows to a newer one is still incredibly expensive and painful. MS has spent the last 10 years getting better and better at this and all things considered, they are somewhere between mediocre and decent at it.
Apple just doesn't do that kind of support. To be "enterprise-worthy" they will have to. And right now they have zero expertise and zero budget for it.
So yeah, the guy who wrote that article is correct. Apple computers as enterprise computers are just around the corner...I mean, Apple computers are spec'ed out like PCs now. That's all you need, right?
"Er... You're aware that PNG is 24 bit rather than 16, right?"
You misunderstand. PNG is 24 bits - 8 bits per channel.
16 bit tiff means that there are 16 bits per channel, or 48 bits per pixel in RGB and 64 bits per pixel in CMYK.
"My guess is that Nikons definition of 'bona fide software companies' is 'software companies able to pay a lot for their proprietary SDK'."
Nikon does not charge anyone for the SDK. While they make a big deal about 'bona fide' developers in the announcement, I've seen a couple of folks in photography forums who got the SDK from Nikon for no other reason than to toy around with it.
Not only does Nikon not charge for the SDK, Adobe doesn't even use it in their ACR software! That's actually what this whole hubbub is about - Adobe doesn't want to use the Nikon SDK (they haven't ever used it) in their RAW capture plug-in.
The data recording the white balance setting is encrypted but the encryption has already been broken by a 3rd party RAW conversion software company. Adobe does not want to risk the legal liability that would come with their plugin breaking the encryption.
Remember, open source does not necessarily mean free as in beer or free as in speech. A lot of business software licenses allow purchasers of the software access to the source code, but it strictly forbids redistribution of the code. Such a license is open source yet not free as in beer and certainly not free as in speech.
Your best bet is to give the client the source code. You need to choose whether or not you want to retain rights to the source code, or give all rights to the client. Most contract programming jobs I've ever heard of require that the client not only gets the binaries and documentation (and sometimes training) but also the source code and complete rights to the source. That way, you don't depend on you for incrimental improvements. They can hire their own developers to do that if they have the source.
Honestly, if this is a custom job that is likely only of interest to the client (and perhaps the client's business competition), you are ripping them off by not giving them the source. But again, it's your job to choose whether or not you want to retain the copyright to the code for yourself, or give all rights to the client.
Kohan is a very good game
Kohan is considered a strong game among the RTS (real time strategy) gaming crowd, but it has not attained the popularity of Starcraft or Age of Kings. This is due in part because of having a new and inexperienced publisher, Strategy First. The publisher never marketed Kohan heavily. Strategy First was the publishing company responsible for the WWII online debacle - they don't have the best track record as a publisher. Members of the online gaming community will be very familiar with this.
Also, Kohan is lacking in the graphics department when compared to their peers. It doesn't look any better than Age of Kings or Starcraft. Some very good 3d RTS games are just around the corner, including Warcraft III, Age of Mythology and Empire Earth. Kohan is a day late and a dollar short in a department that is really a must among the people who really matter - the people in the middle of the curve who buy a lot of games and are not hardcore players.
For the hardcore player Kohan is one of the most unique and best RTS games ever. It is not a clone of more popular RTS games at all. The economic model is unique in a good way. Most other games have over simplied economic models (a good example being starcraft) or an economic model that requires too much micromanagement (a good example being Age of Empires series). The kohan model requires no micromanagement and is complex enough to be very rewarding. The military model adds in aspects of moral and costs of transportation. Slain troops are automatically replaced. This feature alone pushes the economic model to a class above all others. In stead of a static buy stuff/earn stuff model, there is a flow. Costs are higher than income, or costs are lower than income. In my opinion that puts a Kohan feature at the front of the future of RTS gaming.
Unfortunately, Kohan never took off on the windows platform. It deservedly earned rave reviews. It tanked among the online community and the typical community. It was marketed poorly and the graphics technology are below par for it's time. On mrfixitonline, soon to be rtscentral, a place for the most hardcore RTS gamers, our Kohan forums are near dead while after almost 2 years our Age of Kings forum is still rocking solid.
Ok, I'm going to give a shameless plug: I've been volunteering time for an RTS (real time strategy) gaming network for over a year now. mrfixitonline has really taken off. We do neat things like run tournaments and online gaming events, RTS news, expert strategies and forums. We don't make any money doing this. (The site loses a ton), but it is incredible fun.
It is nice to see Kohan make it to Linux. I am a gamer. I also love Linux. I have never played a Loki game in my life. I will buy Kohan when it comes out for Linux. It is as simple as that. If Loki games keeps coming out with strong titles and gaming hardware like soundcards and graphics cards are better supported, people like me will become converts. Kohan is a very strong RTS game. If any of you guys are interested in Kohan, drop by kohan.rtscentral.com and check out what we have to offer for the game. I hate to have to say this, but while still viewable, the Kohan site doesn't display properly under Moz. Grrr.....