Maybe you have me wrong, but multiple applications playing audio was never a need of mine. In fact I immediately disable audio in every program I install, except XMMS and MPlayer.
You do have many valid points though - Linux is slow to evolve. But what massive evolutions have you got from Windows in 5 years? Bigger buttons? Buttons with more colors? Six or more toolbar and menubar schemes between Microsoft's own applications?
To me it's a question of needs. My demands on a system I guess are extremely different than yours. I'm a software developer and I use GCC, Java, Python and Perl under VIM on my home machine and just recently under TextPad on my new corporate laptop. I find that under Windows I'm constantly dicking around to keep things working - scanning for spyware, running a disturbing level of antivirus scans, religiously checking Windows Update, etc. Under Linux on my old laptop (God rest it's soul) once I had Debian configured and my desktop with Enlightenment setup, I just never farted around with stuff much. Sure, I did the daily apt-get update/upgrade, but that was mainly a non-interactive process.
I'm still struggling with Windows XP. Why does my Control Panel look like a regular Explorer window, but the User Accounts app looks like a jelly bean explosion? Why do my four different media players (WMP, BSPlayer, Videolan and Media Player Classic) all choke on different files, whereas MPlayer plays any movie I have - including partially downloaded ones?
I have a million questions about Windows and the applications on it, but I can see this is turning into a rant I'll save for my personal site.
Bottom line though is that if you're uncomfortable with the pace of the Linux evolutionary process then you have two choices - you can take action and try to help, or you can use something else. Try out OSX, I've been hearing lots of good things about that.
Here's my awesome secret for you: don't use any of the hella uncool sound servers. Sure only one app can access the card at once, but who cares? At least every application actually can.
Careful for the Flash plugin holding onto the sound device though.
No; this is an occasional feature that has been around for years. Every so often (once in a few tens of thousand searches) Google will see which result you click.
The DRI drivers cause problems with the ATI cards concerning the game. I used the ATI binary drivers with XFree 4.3 on my 9800 Pro and had no problems.
The way I do it is no WEP, no MAC address protection; but, the only thing open on the wireless LAN is SSH to one box. Then a VTUN tunnel using the SSH connection from my laptop.
Lots of people can bounce onto the LAN and check it out, but there's nothing much there - nothing to ping, etc. Worked well so far (and I make sure to keep SSL/SSH up to date).
Your monitor's refresh rate is different than the games internal clock. So you can definitely increase the refresh rate on your monitor past 60. There'll just be a bunch of duplicate draws.
No, I doubt it is your overclocking - it's the card. These guys (Bungie/Microsoft) targeted the very latest features, which as far as I can tell only really high end cards right now support.
Yep, Catalyst 3.8 drivers and nothing in the system overclocked either. In fact it's at a 333MHZ front-side bus, not even 400.
I think it's the whole Direct X9 Pixel Shader stuff - only the Radeon is newest to support that amount of rendering happening on each pixel.
I play the same games with a Barton 2500+, not OC'ed. The video card I use is an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro and I've had no problems with Halo at all, it runs perfectly.
I recommend you buy Disgaea for the PS2 (if you can find it). It's very similiar to FFT and FFTA but much, much more deep. Check the reviews for it, it sounds like it'd suit your needs.
On a keyboard port you can force an interupt to any IRQ you choose and thus pass arbitrary information to any device driver (level 1)... and you are off to the races. If you are coming in on a USB you can pretty much push arbitrary code through and then run it...
So this is the typical rationale in not fixing a buffer overflow? That since a keyboard is pretty much a security hole to begin with, fuck local exploits? Jesus Christ, what an amazing attitude.
If I were to use the currently-discussed exploit, I could get into a machine and fuck with whatever I wanted in about 5-6 minutes. Using this um, interesting "level 0 hardware concept" (which, according to your post concerns Intel - not Apple - hardware) then okay, I can um... Hm. Maybe force a reboot. Hopefully I have a bootable floppy with the proper password tools on it. Oh wait, hopefully the machine has a floppy drive. Since most servers just plain don't.
I'm not trying to be rude, honestly. It's just the attitude that "Well, other shit's broke, so let's not fix this" is totally bogus.
Slashdot Mirror
You do have many valid points though - Linux is slow to evolve. But what massive evolutions have you got from Windows in 5 years? Bigger buttons? Buttons with more colors? Six or more toolbar and menubar schemes between Microsoft's own applications?
To me it's a question of needs. My demands on a system I guess are extremely different than yours. I'm a software developer and I use GCC, Java, Python and Perl under VIM on my home machine and just recently under TextPad on my new corporate laptop. I find that under Windows I'm constantly dicking around to keep things working - scanning for spyware, running a disturbing level of antivirus scans, religiously checking Windows Update, etc. Under Linux on my old laptop (God rest it's soul) once I had Debian configured and my desktop with Enlightenment setup, I just never farted around with stuff much. Sure, I did the daily apt-get update/upgrade, but that was mainly a non-interactive process.
I'm still struggling with Windows XP. Why does my Control Panel look like a regular Explorer window, but the User Accounts app looks like a jelly bean explosion? Why do my four different media players (WMP, BSPlayer, Videolan and Media Player Classic) all choke on different files, whereas MPlayer plays any movie I have - including partially downloaded ones?
I have a million questions about Windows and the applications on it, but I can see this is turning into a rant I'll save for my personal site.
Bottom line though is that if you're uncomfortable with the pace of the Linux evolutionary process then you have two choices - you can take action and try to help, or you can use something else. Try out OSX, I've been hearing lots of good things about that.
Careful for the Flash plugin holding onto the sound device though.
No; this is an occasional feature that has been around for years. Every so often (once in a few tens of thousand searches) Google will see which result you click.
Having never played it, I can't be sure... But I'm guessing that Chrono Trigger had no random encounters, right?
The DRI drivers cause problems with the ATI cards concerning the game. I used the ATI binary drivers with XFree 4.3 on my 9800 Pro and had no problems.
The way I do it is no WEP, no MAC address protection; but, the only thing open on the wireless LAN is SSH to one box. Then a VTUN tunnel using the SSH connection from my laptop.
Lots of people can bounce onto the LAN and check it out, but there's nothing much there - nothing to ping, etc. Worked well so far (and I make sure to keep SSL/SSH up to date).
You know under Linux it's pretty trivial to change the MAC address of an Ethernet device, right?
Your monitor's refresh rate is different than the games internal clock. So you can definitely increase the refresh rate on your monitor past 60. There'll just be a bunch of duplicate draws.
No, I doubt it is your overclocking - it's the card. These guys (Bungie/Microsoft) targeted the very latest features, which as far as I can tell only really high end cards right now support.
Yep, Catalyst 3.8 drivers and nothing in the system overclocked either. In fact it's at a 333MHZ front-side bus, not even 400. I think it's the whole Direct X9 Pixel Shader stuff - only the Radeon is newest to support that amount of rendering happening on each pixel.
I play the same games with a Barton 2500+, not OC'ed. The video card I use is an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro and I've had no problems with Halo at all, it runs perfectly.
I have a similiar system, Barton 2500+ with 512MB of 2700 RAM. But I have ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, and the game rocks on it.
Second Life.
Huh, that's weird. I can't find the e-mail from Slashdot telling me to be compliant. Maybe you can post it.
Electrix lets you spawn any editor for text area boxes.
The bigger issue is... I can play video games in prison? What the hell's with that?
Pretty much all the P2P networks have tons of videos from the game, as well as all the promotional ones.
Yes. It means that this is a direct sequel to the tenth game. And yes, it goes against the tradition.
I recommend you buy Disgaea for the PS2 (if you can find it). It's very similiar to FFT and FFTA but much, much more deep. Check the reviews for it, it sounds like it'd suit your needs.
Anyone know if this works in Canada? I'm guessing yes, but if it doesn't I can save the bandwidth for the download :-)
Dude, your sig is a link to buy an Amazon iPod with you getting the kickback? Good scam - post a mirror and hawk your wares.
Holy fuck, of course not. But are you stupid enough to think that people don't?
Do you have any pointers to information on this?
Cool, didn't know that.
If I were to use the currently-discussed exploit, I could get into a machine and fuck with whatever I wanted in about 5-6 minutes. Using this um, interesting "level 0 hardware concept" (which, according to your post concerns Intel - not Apple - hardware) then okay, I can um... Hm. Maybe force a reboot. Hopefully I have a bootable floppy with the proper password tools on it. Oh wait, hopefully the machine has a floppy drive. Since most servers just plain don't.
I'm not trying to be rude, honestly. It's just the attitude that "Well, other shit's broke, so let's not fix this" is totally bogus.