If you are bored of/. then stop reading/posting, but trolling isn't great entertainment.
Come on, most of the discussion to the gnutella won't scale stories, and the various Microsoft in court and:CueCat is evil stories has been done. Slashdot would be less boring if every editor didn't feel the need to post a:cuecat and gnutella story...
Let's try it this way: How do you know if you're being useful to the community? How do you know if you've posted a meaningful comment? Either by replies, or by moderation. Watching a post go to +5 is fun, and seeing the karma boost is nice too. The karma gives you a realitivly good idea as to how you've been doing in the slashdot community, as do the various replies and discussions.
But when you can only watch karma go down, that gives the impression that you are no longer actually doing anything useful. (Plus it's possible to actually lose karma on a score 4 post!) It takes away the measure of how well you've been contributing.
(To lose karma on a score 4 post, get modded up to 5, then modded down. The +3/4 (depending on the starting score) will be dropped, but that last -1 will strike you!)
Keep in mind that without the karma cap, I tried to actually be meaningful because I could get feedback via moderation. Now the only feedback I get is from watching each post and reading and responding to replies. This is more work, and it means that in order to guage how well I'm doing on Slashdot, I have to go through my user history list and check on all my comments: not fun.
Besides, all karma really does is turn Slashdot into a game. In some Geeks in Space episode, CmdrTaco (I think) was talking about the (then) new experience point/level system in Everything2, and how it turned it basically into a game. Same thing with karma. Cap the max score, and then it becomes pointless to try and be useful. The bottom line is the karma cap has at best pissed a lot of the karma whores off. It has at worst turned some people into trolls .
So yeah, whenever I have something useful to say, I'll say it, but I won't try and be as nice. If you look through my recent comments, I'm starting to become more of a troll simply due to boredom. (And, probably, due to the fact I really don't have anything to say.)
I really don't think the karma gap has done anything useful. What Rob should really do is consider how to make moderating actually worth while for a moderator. The novelty wares off quickly. Honestly, it really isn't worth the hour it would take me to be a Good Moderator. So maybe that's why moderators seem to suck - they really don't have the time to go over every little thing and figure out how best to moderate. That's how things like the DAEHTIHS protocol get moderated up as "insightful" until someone suggests reading DAEHTIHS backwards.
The problem is, it also took the fun out of my attempting to post anything meaningful.
Think about it this way: What insentive do I have to post meaningful posts? Both in the responses I get, but also in the moderation. If what I say is good, I'll get moderated up. If it's meaningless, down. (Well, not really. Signal 11 did a good job proving that moderation didn't work.)
However, now, I'm at 50 karma. Every once and a while, it'll go down, but sooner or later, I'll hit the cap anymore. Theres no incentive for me to attempt to post anything meaningful anymore. I'm stuck at 50. In fact, I've actually tried to troll a few times just to take a karma hit so that I could watch it go up again! It's just not worth it to attempt to be meaningful, because there's really no reward.
On this topic, there's also no reward for moderating. In fact, there's a penalty! So moderators, thanks to M2, have to remain "goodthinkful," and can't moderate correctly. M2 was probably one of the biggest assets to Siggy's karma whoring.
Maybe Kuro5hin can come up with a working moderation system, complete with karma. The system on Slashdot is broken. The karma barrier made it worse.
Wow - thanks - you got me moderated up to +3! Heh, now my karma's back to being up against the wall at 50.
Sheesh, this could almost be an example of how to trick moderators. Ever notice that when someone responds to a post disagreeing with the parent, and then gets modded up, the parent often gets modded down? But if they agree, the parent gets modded up. Nevermind the quality on the post.
Oh well - the real problem with moderation is that there's really no insentive to do a good job. There is an insentive not to do a bad job - but by simply not moderating at all, you can get yourself out of that.
Heh, you sig, You have moved your mouse. Windows will now reboot., just happened to me this week. Except that Windows wouldn't reboot, it would hang. I think it was bad vendor drivers, but if that were the case, I should shoot Microsoft since they better know how to write drivers for the Microsoft Intellimouse (with Intellieye). Then again, with all the crap I had to go through with the intellimouse under Linux, I think changing is appropriate. (It has some really interesting flukes where some packet it sends screws XFree86 up, I think. But I'm not sure.)
Anyway, if anyone thinks Windows really is more stable than that, it probably is, but I just had to FORMAT C: and reinstall to prevent it from crashing every time I moved my mouse. (Actually, I believe it has something to do with USB support, but I'm not sure.)
Windows is working now, and a quick lilo got my system back to dual-booting, but it was annoying enough. Your sig just seemed appropriate, somehow...
Wow. I'm glad to see that Slashdot is capable of telling time. Hmm, 7PM. That would have been 36 minutes before the story was posted. Methinks we missed a bit of the webcast here. C'mon, you've got to have a clock when you post these things. I've got a cool little clock applet running under Gnome - it helps me attend classes on time. Even if you are in another timezone when you posted this, you still should at least think about what time it'll end up being. Unless it was 7PM GMT in which case you really dropped the ball.
Here's a question: Why on earth do computer programmers wanna be known as "hackers?" Doesn't sound like something I would want to be known as, for several reasons:
hack-er, noun
one that hacks
a person who is inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity <a tennis hacker>
an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer
a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system
So, a "hacker" is one who "hacks" (more on that later) or someone who is unskilled at a specific activity. Well that does sound like some "hackers" I know, that doesn't sound like something I'd go around calling myself!
Moving on to "hack:"
hack verb, transitive:
a) to cut or sever with repeated irregular or unskillful blows b) to cut or shape by or as if by crude or ruthless strokes <hacking out new election districts> c) ANNOY, VEX -- often used with off
to clear or make by or as if by cutting away vegetation <hacked his way through the brush>
a) to manage successfully <just couldn't hack the new job> b) TOLERATE <I can't hack all this noise>
verb, intransitive:
a) to make chopping strokes or blows <hacked at the weeds>; also : to make cuts as if by chopping <hacking away at the work force> b) to play inexpert golf
to cough in a short dry manner
LOAF -- usually used with around
a) to write computer programs for enjoyment b) to gain access to a computer illegally
Again, minus the computer entries, it seems that being a hacker means that you're either unskilled at something or are doing things basically in a brute and unsophisticated way. Not something I'd like to be aquainted with.
It's interesting to see that the dictionary contains both meanings of the word "hacker" but not surprising - words may have many meanings, and it's the job of a dictionary to list them all.
Actually, what'd I'd really like to know is how "hacker" picked up the computer related meanings. Seems natural now, but "hack" is a fairly old word, originating from the 14th century. It doesn't seem like something that someone would want to self-label themselves with, but given that a lot of people around here call themselves "geeks" I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Of course, none of us geeks actually bites the heads off chickens, but I'd love to know how chicken-head-biter moved to mean intellectual loser. (Or, from m-w.com again, "[one] who is disapproved of.") Interestingly enough, the word geek was most likely derived from a German word for "fool."
That's not as bad as this, when Hemos posted the same story, twice. The double stories stayed up for quite a while, until finally someone took the second one down.
I love how people post anonymously with nothing decent to say. Want to give examples? Reasons? Or can I just conclude based on my experiences that you couldn't afford the game and got upset watching someone else play it? Come on - flames are fair game, but put your name to it or back it up with something! Where, oh where, are the good trolls? The ones who really stir the shit up? That is the most pathetic, worthless excuse for a flame I've ever read. Come on, you can do better!
BTW, M$ has already released Metal Gear Solid for Windows... I've got my copy - looks quite nice. Although they took out force-feedback!
I haven't seen the X-Box's controller, but that could be a big part of getting one - if the controller is good and offers decent force-feedback, has the buttons nicely placed, and gets the general feel right, that'll be cool. If not...
Doesn't really matter, MGS's main strength was the story. The graphics were OK, but the combination of the gameplay and the story just put the thing over the top. Hell, MGS created a new "editor's award" for Electronic Gaming Monthly, since it was the first game to receive all 10s, the highest score possible. They came up with a "platinum" award for that. Only other game to do that was Zelda64, which, IMHO, wasn't anywhere near as good as MGS was.
Remains to be seen - the X-Box still seems a bit vaporous - when I can actually see the unit and controllers, maybe I'll be more interested. 'Course, I'd like to know the price-tag too. But it doesn't really matter - the reason Sony won the last console-war battle was because they out-marketted everyone else. MS isn't used to actually marketting their software anymore, so they could still blow the X-box. Time will tell... (Actually, I'll bet by the time the X-Box is released, my PC will be faster, have more memory, better sound, and better graphics than the X-Box anyway so it won't really matter... Besides, the X-Box will be limited to a TV, which my PC isn't. MGS Windows looks a lot nicer and sounds better than MGS PSX did.)
Bottom line is the MGS was an experience, so it shouldn't really matter which console runs it. I dunno, the X-box doesn't really impress me - yet - so I can't say for certain.
Basically, that's the reason I'll be getting one. If you haven't seen the trailer, GO! Two places the came up immediately on a Google search were ps2.ign.com and ZDNe t.c om, so go and download the trailer.
One look at that and you'll know one of the major reasons people will be purchasing PS2s... (Backwards compatibility and Final Fantasy X are the other reasons for me...)
AFAIK, that is indeed the real Timothy, one of the few Slashdot editors that actually post responses to their articles. (Jon Katz is really the only other I'm aware of.)
As is evident from people selling movie rights, it is possible to "own" someone else's life, or portions of it...
Bottom line is, morality aside, they probably did agree to it. It may not be right, but they probably did agree to it. And once you agree to something, you can't just say "well, that's unfair!", you've agreed to it.
Yes, they probably did agree to it. Presumably, to play in the games, you need to sign some sort of sign-up form which says amoung other things that you agree to follow the rules set by the IOC. These rules may include things like saying that all football games follow FIFA rules. They also most likely include provisions against using performance-enhancing drugs and the likes. And, now, they say you can't talk about your experiences during the Olympics unless your talking through IOC approved channels.
Since IANAOlympian and probably never will be (probably? definately!) I've never actually looked at what they say, but usually, whenever you sign up to play in any type of tournament, you agree to the rules they set. Most of the rules are good: specifying that the ruling of the judges is final, the exact ruleset used for a game, etc. So I would find it quite unlikely that the athletes didn't agree to it. More likely than not, they were warned to stop it or forfeit any chance of a metal. It's still the Olympics, so that's probably quite a powerful threat...
In the early days of Windows, DOS was still dominant, and since in DOS you could do all sorts of fancy hardware tricks by ignoring the OS such as it was, many games were developed for DOS.
Windows had some games, but they weren't as powerful or as fun as DOS games. But they were slightly easier to write, since they didn't need sound drivers and graphics drivers to be written for the game itself.
Then came Windows 95. Windows 95's APIs were slightly faster than Windows 3.1, and Window-based games were possible. But DOS games still ruled.
MS wasn't stupid - they knew that ease of access to hardware is what made DOS the OS of choice for games. So they did the intelligent thing - they made it possible to access the hardware through an abstraction layer, called DirectX. The first real DirectX games were made based on DirectX 3 (what's it with MS and getting things right the third version?).
Since then, this "Direct X" beast has been what allowed people to make video games that run on a vast number of hardware.
Consoles skip that problem handily. All the hardware is the same, always! (Well, sorta. Sony added some new stuff when they created the Dual Shock. But it became standardized because - well, Sony did it first and marketed it, and since they made the console....)
Because the hardware is known on a console, you can use assembly and write really fast routines for the hardware. You don't need to rely on abstraction layers that know which registers exist on the GPU for this card and what to do to access the DSP for the sound card. It's all known.
That being said, you really don't need much of a kernel for your OS. (Besides, a RR scheduler on a gaming machine? Ugh.) All you need to provide are services to access the media, services to use the network (if provided), and that's basically it. You probably don't want to make hardware drivers in the OS - let people optimize their game for the single set of hardware. That's what "next generation" games do - the first generation of games are trying out a console, as time goes on, people learn how to use the hardware in the best possible way for what they wish to do.
The bottom line is that Windows got game because it was easier to access computer hardware to write fast games on it. When it got > 75% of the market share, it became a sure-thing to write for. Macs aren't a real target platform because of the small market. Same for Linux.
Consoles have the same market share problem, to a degree. Once a console's hardware is a restriction on the games, developers will be more likely to move to a newer console simply to take advantage of the newer, nicer hardware. Hardware is a factor, market penetration is more. Accessing the hardware is the biggest hurdle using an OS, and Windows would be the worst if it wasn't for DirectX providing a standard way to do it.
X basically takes very simple drawing commands and executes them. It also takes input from a variety of devices and sends messages back to the client applications telling them that the mouse clicked or a key was pressed. Beyond that, it does nothing.
A replacement for X would need to be a simple API that can change the backend for local/network support - when an app is run on the same machine as the server, it would run using the "local" API version, but when it was run across a network link (ie, SSH) it would instead use a network protocol.
Nicely enough, that would require additional forwarding code in SSH, so...
Besides, XFree86 4.0 is finally starting to become a less bloated X server in that they've finally separated the server portions from the display portions - the display drivers are now modular; before they were tied into the X server at compile time, not run time. This is good, because it means that something that replaces XFree86 4 could use XFree86 4 driver modules.
You know what's funny then? Under Half-Life, the OpenGL drivers make the game run faster, look nicer, and all around run better than using the Direct3D version. I'm using an nVidia GTS2.
BTW, please not that all I said is that MS wouldn't prevent them - not that there aren't other reasons not to port to Linux - which there are plenty. (Reasons presented in the parent post, the fact that anything you do for Linux will piss off someone, there's a market for Windows games, Linux games tend to be less stable than a Windows version and less feature-full, etc, etc, etc.)
Appeals, appeals. They haven't lost yet - as soon as the appeals go through, then we'll know. They're being careful for now, but with.NET they're trying to move all applications into the OS so that they will no longer need to worry about being split up into apps and OSes - that's the real threat. Pay for use - and it's coming soon. It remains to be seen what that'll do.
Besides, if they'd really lost, then MS would be feeling the pinch, and they'd definately not stop the porting of games to non-MS platforms - they wouldn't be allowed to. But since the case is currently in appeal-limbo, they're playing carefully and hoping to get out of jail free.
Fortunately for Linux geeks, it's highly unlikely that MS would completely prevent them from porting any games to other OSes. The DOJ would just love to have a Bungie employee come in and say that MS forced them not to develop for other OSes.
Should MS win the court case, then they might be able to do that. Right now, they're in deep shit and they know it - they're actually playing the game very, very, carefully. Doing something like forcing Bungie to only develop for MS OSes would not go over well with the DoJ. So for the time being, we're OK.
That's odd, it runs nice and speedy on my K-7 800 MHz, with an nVidia GTS 2...
I dunno - I ran nightlys all summer on a 500MHz Pentium III box running NT, and it ran rather nice. Whatever - I still don't use it for daily browsing, since random seg. faults get annoying. Right now, Mozilla crashes after about an hour of use due to seg. fault. Plus some of the QA options now read "bloat" so I'm wondering what they're thinking of these new features themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
Come on, most of the discussion to the gnutella won't scale stories, and the various Microsoft in court and :CueCat is evil stories has been done. Slashdot would be less boring if every editor didn't feel the need to post a :cuecat and gnutella story...
Sorry, I'll be good now.
But when you can only watch karma go down, that gives the impression that you are no longer actually doing anything useful. (Plus it's possible to actually lose karma on a score 4 post!) It takes away the measure of how well you've been contributing.
(To lose karma on a score 4 post, get modded up to 5, then modded down. The +3/4 (depending on the starting score) will be dropped, but that last -1 will strike you!)
Keep in mind that without the karma cap, I tried to actually be meaningful because I could get feedback via moderation. Now the only feedback I get is from watching each post and reading and responding to replies. This is more work, and it means that in order to guage how well I'm doing on Slashdot, I have to go through my user history list and check on all my comments: not fun.
Besides, all karma really does is turn Slashdot into a game. In some Geeks in Space episode, CmdrTaco (I think) was talking about the (then) new experience point/level system in Everything2, and how it turned it basically into a game. Same thing with karma. Cap the max score, and then it becomes pointless to try and be useful. The bottom line is the karma cap has at best pissed a lot of the karma whores off. It has at worst turned some people into trolls .
So yeah, whenever I have something useful to say, I'll say it, but I won't try and be as nice. If you look through my recent comments, I'm starting to become more of a troll simply due to boredom. (And, probably, due to the fact I really don't have anything to say.)
I really don't think the karma gap has done anything useful. What Rob should really do is consider how to make moderating actually worth while for a moderator. The novelty wares off quickly. Honestly, it really isn't worth the hour it would take me to be a Good Moderator. So maybe that's why moderators seem to suck - they really don't have the time to go over every little thing and figure out how best to moderate. That's how things like the DAEHTIHS protocol get moderated up as "insightful" until someone suggests reading DAEHTIHS backwards.
You mean like this post? Which some AC has already trolled him for? C'mon, that was the first response!
Think about it this way: What insentive do I have to post meaningful posts? Both in the responses I get, but also in the moderation. If what I say is good, I'll get moderated up. If it's meaningless, down. (Well, not really. Signal 11 did a good job proving that moderation didn't work.)
However, now, I'm at 50 karma. Every once and a while, it'll go down, but sooner or later, I'll hit the cap anymore. Theres no incentive for me to attempt to post anything meaningful anymore. I'm stuck at 50. In fact, I've actually tried to troll a few times just to take a karma hit so that I could watch it go up again! It's just not worth it to attempt to be meaningful, because there's really no reward.
On this topic, there's also no reward for moderating. In fact, there's a penalty! So moderators, thanks to M2, have to remain "goodthinkful," and can't moderate correctly. M2 was probably one of the biggest assets to Siggy's karma whoring.
Maybe Kuro5hin can come up with a working moderation system, complete with karma. The system on Slashdot is broken. The karma barrier made it worse.
For all the Calvin and Hobbes fans out there:
"It builds character."
Sheesh, this could almost be an example of how to trick moderators. Ever notice that when someone responds to a post disagreeing with the parent, and then gets modded up, the parent often gets modded down? But if they agree, the parent gets modded up. Nevermind the quality on the post.
Oh well - the real problem with moderation is that there's really no insentive to do a good job. There is an insentive not to do a bad job - but by simply not moderating at all, you can get yourself out of that.
Anyway, if anyone thinks Windows really is more stable than that, it probably is, but I just had to FORMAT C: and reinstall to prevent it from crashing every time I moved my mouse. (Actually, I believe it has something to do with USB support, but I'm not sure.)
Windows is working now, and a quick lilo got my system back to dual-booting, but it was annoying enough. Your sig just seemed appropriate, somehow...
There will be a public debate at 7PM...
Wow. I'm glad to see that Slashdot is capable of telling time. Hmm, 7PM. That would have been 36 minutes before the story was posted. Methinks we missed a bit of the webcast here. C'mon, you've got to have a clock when you post these things. I've got a cool little clock applet running under Gnome - it helps me attend classes on time. Even if you are in another timezone when you posted this, you still should at least think about what time it'll end up being. Unless it was 7PM GMT in which case you really dropped the ball.
hack-er, noun
(From the defintion at Merrian-Webster.)
So, a "hacker" is one who "hacks" (more on that later) or someone who is unskilled at a specific activity. Well that does sound like some "hackers" I know, that doesn't sound like something I'd go around calling myself!
Moving on to "hack:"
hack verb, transitive:
- a) to cut or sever with repeated irregular or unskillful blows
- to clear or make by or as if by cutting away vegetation <hacked his way through the brush>
- a) to manage successfully <just couldn't hack the new job>
verb, intransitive:b) to cut or shape by or as if by crude or ruthless strokes <hacking out new election districts>
c) ANNOY, VEX -- often used with off
b) TOLERATE <I can't hack all this noise>
b) to play inexpert golf
b) to gain access to a computer illegally
Again, minus the computer entries, it seems that being a hacker means that you're either unskilled at something or are doing things basically in a brute and unsophisticated way. Not something I'd like to be aquainted with.
It's interesting to see that the dictionary contains both meanings of the word "hacker" but not surprising - words may have many meanings, and it's the job of a dictionary to list them all.
Actually, what'd I'd really like to know is how "hacker" picked up the computer related meanings. Seems natural now, but "hack" is a fairly old word, originating from the 14th century. It doesn't seem like something that someone would want to self-label themselves with, but given that a lot of people around here call themselves "geeks" I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Of course, none of us geeks actually bites the heads off chickens, but I'd love to know how chicken-head-biter moved to mean intellectual loser. (Or, from m-w.com again, "[one] who is disapproved of.") Interestingly enough, the word geek was most likely derived from a German word for "fool."
That's not as bad as this, when Hemos posted the same story, twice. The double stories stayed up for quite a while, until finally someone took the second one down.
Wow, now this really is flamebait!
I haven't seen the X-Box's controller, but that could be a big part of getting one - if the controller is good and offers decent force-feedback, has the buttons nicely placed, and gets the general feel right, that'll be cool. If not...
Doesn't really matter, MGS's main strength was the story. The graphics were OK, but the combination of the gameplay and the story just put the thing over the top. Hell, MGS created a new "editor's award" for Electronic Gaming Monthly, since it was the first game to receive all 10s, the highest score possible. They came up with a "platinum" award for that. Only other game to do that was Zelda64, which, IMHO, wasn't anywhere near as good as MGS was.
Remains to be seen - the X-Box still seems a bit vaporous - when I can actually see the unit and controllers, maybe I'll be more interested. 'Course, I'd like to know the price-tag too. But it doesn't really matter - the reason Sony won the last console-war battle was because they out-marketted everyone else. MS isn't used to actually marketting their software anymore, so they could still blow the X-box. Time will tell... (Actually, I'll bet by the time the X-Box is released, my PC will be faster, have more memory, better sound, and better graphics than the X-Box anyway so it won't really matter... Besides, the X-Box will be limited to a TV, which my PC isn't. MGS Windows looks a lot nicer and sounds better than MGS PSX did.)
Bottom line is the MGS was an experience, so it shouldn't really matter which console runs it. I dunno, the X-box doesn't really impress me - yet - so I can't say for certain.
Yes:
Metal Gear Solid 2: The Sons of Liberty.
Plus, Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XI, the next Oddysee game, etc, etc.
One look at that and you'll know one of the major reasons people will be purchasing PS2s... (Backwards compatibility and Final Fantasy X are the other reasons for me...)
AFAIK, that is indeed the real Timothy, one of the few Slashdot editors that actually post responses to their articles. (Jon Katz is really the only other I'm aware of.)
ftp.redhat.com - mirrors are for--- people who don't piss off sysadmins I guess.
Bottom line is, morality aside, they probably did agree to it. It may not be right, but they probably did agree to it. And once you agree to something, you can't just say "well, that's unfair!", you've agreed to it.
Since IANAOlympian and probably never will be (probably? definately!) I've never actually looked at what they say, but usually, whenever you sign up to play in any type of tournament, you agree to the rules they set. Most of the rules are good: specifying that the ruling of the judges is final, the exact ruleset used for a game, etc. So I would find it quite unlikely that the athletes didn't agree to it. More likely than not, they were warned to stop it or forfeit any chance of a metal. It's still the Olympics, so that's probably quite a powerful threat...
I am currently downloading the second ISO image. It's available today.
Windows had some games, but they weren't as powerful or as fun as DOS games. But they were slightly easier to write, since they didn't need sound drivers and graphics drivers to be written for the game itself.
Then came Windows 95. Windows 95's APIs were slightly faster than Windows 3.1, and Window-based games were possible. But DOS games still ruled.
MS wasn't stupid - they knew that ease of access to hardware is what made DOS the OS of choice for games. So they did the intelligent thing - they made it possible to access the hardware through an abstraction layer, called DirectX. The first real DirectX games were made based on DirectX 3 (what's it with MS and getting things right the third version?).
Since then, this "Direct X" beast has been what allowed people to make video games that run on a vast number of hardware.
Consoles skip that problem handily. All the hardware is the same, always! (Well, sorta. Sony added some new stuff when they created the Dual Shock. But it became standardized because - well, Sony did it first and marketed it, and since they made the console....)
Because the hardware is known on a console, you can use assembly and write really fast routines for the hardware. You don't need to rely on abstraction layers that know which registers exist on the GPU for this card and what to do to access the DSP for the sound card. It's all known.
That being said, you really don't need much of a kernel for your OS. (Besides, a RR scheduler on a gaming machine? Ugh.) All you need to provide are services to access the media, services to use the network (if provided), and that's basically it. You probably don't want to make hardware drivers in the OS - let people optimize their game for the single set of hardware. That's what "next generation" games do - the first generation of games are trying out a console, as time goes on, people learn how to use the hardware in the best possible way for what they wish to do.
The bottom line is that Windows got game because it was easier to access computer hardware to write fast games on it. When it got > 75% of the market share, it became a sure-thing to write for. Macs aren't a real target platform because of the small market. Same for Linux.
Consoles have the same market share problem, to a degree. Once a console's hardware is a restriction on the games, developers will be more likely to move to a newer console simply to take advantage of the newer, nicer hardware. Hardware is a factor, market penetration is more. Accessing the hardware is the biggest hurdle using an OS, and Windows would be the worst if it wasn't for DirectX providing a standard way to do it.
X basically takes very simple drawing commands and executes them. It also takes input from a variety of devices and sends messages back to the client applications telling them that the mouse clicked or a key was pressed. Beyond that, it does nothing.
A replacement for X would need to be a simple API that can change the backend for local/network support - when an app is run on the same machine as the server, it would run using the "local" API version, but when it was run across a network link (ie, SSH) it would instead use a network protocol. Nicely enough, that would require additional forwarding code in SSH, so...
Besides, XFree86 4.0 is finally starting to become a less bloated X server in that they've finally separated the server portions from the display portions - the display drivers are now modular; before they were tied into the X server at compile time, not run time. This is good, because it means that something that replaces XFree86 4 could use XFree86 4 driver modules.
BTW, please not that all I said is that MS wouldn't prevent them - not that there aren't other reasons not to port to Linux - which there are plenty. (Reasons presented in the parent post, the fact that anything you do for Linux will piss off someone, there's a market for Windows games, Linux games tend to be less stable than a Windows version and less feature-full, etc, etc, etc.)
Besides, if they'd really lost, then MS would be feeling the pinch, and they'd definately not stop the porting of games to non-MS platforms - they wouldn't be allowed to. But since the case is currently in appeal-limbo, they're playing carefully and hoping to get out of jail free.
Should MS win the court case, then they might be able to do that. Right now, they're in deep shit and they know it - they're actually playing the game very, very, carefully. Doing something like forcing Bungie to only develop for MS OSes would not go over well with the DoJ. So for the time being, we're OK.
I dunno - I ran nightlys all summer on a 500MHz Pentium III box running NT, and it ran rather nice. Whatever - I still don't use it for daily browsing, since random seg. faults get annoying. Right now, Mozilla crashes after about an hour of use due to seg. fault. Plus some of the QA options now read "bloat" so I'm wondering what they're thinking of these new features themselves.