> Some guy has made a bunch of 150MB ogg video files of Star Trek Enterprise episodes available, and they are all reliably downloadable (at about 40k/sec across a broadband connection) from Freenet.
And the amazing thing is, they're 100% as crappy as they were on television!
> What color is the sky in your world? [...] Even if you did manage to assemble the right talent of artists, musicians, programmers, testers, managers, etc.
I live in a world where the color of the sky indicates that artists, musicians, and managers don't add a heck of a lot to the game-playing experience.
I mentioned continuous evolution as the reason for OSS gaming's ultimate supremacy, but I should have mentioned the increasing diversion of resources into irrelevant fluff as the reason for commercial gaming's... increasing fluff-orientation. It's kind of like the music industry: marketing has become more important than the content.
[Heh, and I use the graphic tiles when I play Angband. You can imagine what a hardliner would say about today's commercial games!]
> > IMO that's the strength of OSS games: they can evolve continuously rather than being discarded after a year due to marketing demands. Within a decade the best-of-breed in every gaming category will be an OSS game.
IMO that's the strength of OSS games: they can evolve continuously rather than being discarded after a year due to marketing demands. Within a decade the best-of-breed in every gaming category will be an OSS game.
> Third, 802.11b enabling the captain to "run the ship" from anywhere presupposes that the captain can "run the ship" whenever he or she has a network connection and... what, a PDA or PC?
> This is why computer games will NEVER be open-source. How many fiascos, from the rubbish produced from the freeciv project to...
I still play Freeciv. I've quit playing Civ, Civ II, and Civ-CTP, though I still have them all.
I'm curious why you call Freeciv rubbish, if you would care to elaborate.
Yes, most free/open game projects never get their wings. But for those that do, I expect that they will eventually evolve into best-of-breed for their class. Why? Becase they do evolve, rather that being discarded for a startover every year or so to satisfy marketing needs.
> I mean really - how hard would it be to put a one line description about what the Parsec project is in the article body?
One of the things that really irks me at Sourceforge is when you pull a list of all the games under development they tend to tell you what language they're programming in and what gee-whiz rendering technology they're going to use, but don't say the first word about what the game is.
> Seriously, this is a fun read by some FX experts that really destroys that alien autopsy stuff.
The most damning criticism I've heard of the "autopsy" is that the doctor's goal seemed to be to see how fast he could shovel out the alien's innards. An autopsy is an investigation, not an emptying of the slop bucket.
> The only way you could prove that that issue would always cause a loss is if you could prove that an impossible to place series _necessarily must_ occur. Unfortunately, because the piece order is by definition random, you can only say that it is very likely that an impossible to place piece order would occur eventually, not that it must occurr.
If the sequence were genuinely random, then over infinite time every possible finite sequence must occur.
An infinite number of times each, for that matter.
Re: Extremely impressive feature list
on
KDE 3.1 Released
·
· Score: 1
> I usually try KDE every new release, and after some time, I wind up going back to GNOME. I'm just more comfortable with GNOME. I can't explain it.
I think GNOME's idiotic reversal of the conventional placement of the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons in dialogs is going to ruin that "just more comfortable" edge for a lot of us.
> Basically it frees you of having to read a manual and to remember command line options... and it offers 'profiles' for different network environments, so you do not need to know all the VNC codecs to have optimal settings(did you know that a -encodings "copyrect hextile" results in dramatically better latency values on local LANs than the default TightVNC settings?). And you can switch modes (fullscreen, scaled) while you are connected.
Thanks. Sounds like a cool application.
> > Also... This is an application, OK? Does it really require a desktop upgrade?
> Not really, it is more about convenience for both user and developer. The newer KDE and Qt version fix a number of bugs that caused problems though. I do not have the time to maintain backports, I rather work on improvements. You are, of course, free to provide backports for older KDE versions.
LMAO. Could I interest you in pointing out to some of your fans that that's exactly the position Red Hat has taken w.r.t KDE 3.1?
Sounds like KDE isn't supporting their userbase very well.
Is Red Hat also obligated to provide a retrorelease of Freeciv 1.14 for Red Hat 8.0? Are they obligated to provide a retrorelease of my software for Red Hat 8.0?
> RedHat does NOT do their users the service of providing binary packages. That's fine, but YOU don't have to listen to all of the RedHat users bitching and complaining that they don't get to run the latest KDE, and their friends running SuSE and Mandrake do, and that's not fair, and KDE is anti-RedHat.
Sounds to me like KDE adopted a stupid policy and some of their users want to blame someone else for it.
> If RedHat would do the same for KDE as any one of the other distros does, that would please me to no end. Instead, they take our source code, they strip out the information about the project that provides it, they ruin our desktop by adding hacks to Qt that make it more unstable, they ship pre-release versions of the base libraries and applications that comprise the entire system, and I'm supposed to be happy with that? Please.
Sounds like RH treats KDE the way the treat everything else. Don't like, don't release as open source.
> I was only responding in kind to Black Parrot's post where he claimed that KDE developers are a bunch of "fucking crybabies"
Ah, but I didn't say anything about "KDE developers". My comment was directed toward the krybabies themselves.
(Traditionally it has been the KDE users rather than the KDE developers that have been the big krybabies. Is that trend changing?)
> when in fact RedHat does everyone a disservice and you people can't climb over eachother fast enough to kiss their ass when they do.
I think Red Hat does everyone a big service by trying to make reasonably current stuff work together in each new release, and then letting well enough alone and concentrating on a new release with new goodies in it. You simply can't hold Red Hat responsible for packaging everyone's newly released software for RH 8. They don't do it for anyone else; why should KDE get special treatment?
OSS is ultimately about taking responsibility. Lots of KDE users are more interested in finding some non-KDE entity to blame. That krybaby mentality is why lots of us don't want to be seen using KDE.
> when in fact RedHat does everyone a disservice and you people can't climb over eachother fast enough to kiss their ass when they do.
They sure as heck didn't get a lot of ass-kissing over gcc-2.96. Get a grip on reality.
> An excellent post on why people should stay clear of RedHat. If you expect to have the latest Free Software from the coolest software projects you can not get that with RedHat.
Actually, most of the projects I use either provide RH RPMs for the several most recent versions (and similarly for other popular distros), or else have a system where volunteers provide them and the project links to them.
> The purpose of a large patent portfolio is not to protect your "intellectual property", but to cover such a wide base that anyone who has technology you want or whose patents you might be violating is assured of violating at least one of your patents.
A side effect - presumably intentional - is that it sets up a huge barrier to entry by little guys who want a slice of the economic pie. The big guys can say "I'll let you use mine if you'll let me use yours", but the little guy can't ante up.
> The article I read (on yahoo [yahoo.com]) states the unpatched servers were all on the internal network, not the internet, and that they were in use by researchers within microsoft. Let's not jump too quickly on the bash microsoft bandwagon for that.
The fact that it ate their lunch is de facto evidence that they should have patched them all.
> > Would you rather have a system where you have to manually implement every patch, or would you rather have a system where you didn't have any choices which patches were implemented?
> The first choice would lead to a lot more work.
I find the application-specific security patches we do under Linux to be trivially easy:
Read the announcement to see whether it applies.
Click link to download the update (else use ncftptget).
Verify checksum.
Apply patch by typing one line in su window.
[Restart daemon, if needed.]
The only time it's tedious is when it's a kernel upgrade (rare) or when it requires downloading something big from a patch-dotted server.
> RedHat posts KDE 3.1 beta snapshot RPMs, for a beta release of their distro, provides no guarantees that these RPMs will even install (let alone WORK) on the latest RELEASED version of their distro, and that's support?
AFAIK, Red Hat has pursued a policy, since long before KDE existed, of releasing post hoc RPMs only in the case of security patches and serious bug fixes. There have been times in the past when a Red Hat release came out just a few months before a GNOME release, and GNOME got exactly the same treatment KDE is getting now.
Same goes for any other application. Red Hat has never ensured that the latest version of anything will work with the latest version of Red Hat. Instead, they spend their time making sure everything they ship with their next release actually works together.
Sounds to me like KDE adopted a foolish policy - assuming they actually want people to be able to run the latest KDE under the latest Red Hat. (It's a bitch not being able to kick bigger enterprises around, ain't it?)
Slashdot Mirror
> Some guy has made a bunch of 150MB ogg video files of Star Trek Enterprise episodes available, and they are all reliably downloadable (at about 40k/sec across a broadband connection) from Freenet.
And the amazing thing is, they're 100% as crappy as they were on television!
> What color is the sky in your world? [...] Even if you did manage to assemble the right talent of artists, musicians, programmers, testers, managers, etc.
I live in a world where the color of the sky indicates that artists, musicians, and managers don't add a heck of a lot to the game-playing experience.
I mentioned continuous evolution as the reason for OSS gaming's ultimate supremacy, but I should have mentioned the increasing diversion of resources into irrelevant fluff as the reason for commercial gaming's... increasing fluff-orientation. It's kind of like the music industry: marketing has become more important than the content.
[Heh, and I use the graphic tiles when I play Angband. You can imagine what a hardliner would say about today's commercial games!]
> > IMO that's the strength of OSS games: they can evolve continuously rather than being discarded after a year due to marketing demands. Within a decade the best-of-breed in every gaming category will be an OSS game.
> Hahahah! Hahahhaahha! Hahahahhahahahahahahahahaha!!!
> In other words...No, you are quite wrong!
Bookmark this thread. We'll be wanting to discuss this again in January 2013.
>
Are you bragging or complaining?
IMO that's the strength of OSS games: they can evolve continuously rather than being discarded after a year due to marketing demands. Within a decade the best-of-breed in every gaming category will be an OSS game.
> Third, 802.11b enabling the captain to "run the ship" from anywhere presupposes that the captain can "run the ship" whenever he or she has a network connection and... what, a PDA or PC?
I was kind of thinking in terms of "joystick".
> This is why computer games will NEVER be open-source. How many fiascos, from the rubbish produced from the freeciv project to...
I still play Freeciv. I've quit playing Civ, Civ II, and Civ-CTP, though I still have them all.
I'm curious why you call Freeciv rubbish, if you would care to elaborate.
Yes, most free/open game projects never get their wings. But for those that do, I expect that they will eventually evolve into best-of-breed for their class. Why? Becase they do evolve, rather that being discarded for a startover every year or so to satisfy marketing needs.
> I mean really - how hard would it be to put a one line description about what the Parsec project is in the article body?
One of the things that really irks me at Sourceforge is when you pull a list of all the games under development they tend to tell you what language they're programming in and what gee-whiz rendering technology they're going to use, but don't say the first word about what the game is.
> Seriously, this is a fun read by some FX experts that really destroys that alien autopsy stuff.
The most damning criticism I've heard of the "autopsy" is that the doctor's goal seemed to be to see how fast he could shovel out the alien's innards. An autopsy is an investigation, not an emptying of the slop bucket.
> The only way you could prove that that issue would always cause a loss is if you could prove that an impossible to place series _necessarily must_ occur. Unfortunately, because the piece order is by definition random, you can only say that it is very likely that an impossible to place piece order would occur eventually, not that it must occurr.
If the sequence were genuinely random, then over infinite time every possible finite sequence must occur.
An infinite number of times each, for that matter.
> I usually try KDE every new release, and after some time, I wind up going back to GNOME. I'm just more comfortable with GNOME. I can't explain it.
I think GNOME's idiotic reversal of the conventional placement of the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons in dialogs is going to ruin that "just more comfortable" edge for a lot of us.
> Basically it frees you of having to read a manual and to remember command line options... and it offers 'profiles' for different network environments, so you do not need to know all the VNC codecs to have optimal settings(did you know that a -encodings "copyrect hextile" results in dramatically better latency values on local LANs than the default TightVNC settings?). And you can switch modes (fullscreen, scaled) while you are connected.
Thanks. Sounds like a cool application.
> > Also... This is an application, OK? Does it really require a desktop upgrade?
> Not really, it is more about convenience for both user and developer. The newer KDE and Qt version fix a number of bugs that caused problems though. I do not have the time to maintain backports, I rather work on improvements. You are, of course, free to provide backports for older KDE versions.
LMAO. Could I interest you in pointing out to some of your fans that that's exactly the position Red Hat has taken w.r.t KDE 3.1?
> KDE provides source packages.
Sounds like KDE isn't supporting their userbase very well.
Is Red Hat also obligated to provide a retrorelease of Freeciv 1.14 for Red Hat 8.0? Are they obligated to provide a retrorelease of my software for Red Hat 8.0?
> RedHat does NOT do their users the service of providing binary packages. That's fine, but YOU don't have to listen to all of the RedHat users bitching and complaining that they don't get to run the latest KDE, and their friends running SuSE and Mandrake do, and that's not fair, and KDE is anti-RedHat.
Sounds to me like KDE adopted a stupid policy and some of their users want to blame someone else for it.
> If RedHat would do the same for KDE as any one of the other distros does, that would please me to no end. Instead, they take our source code, they strip out the information about the project that provides it, they ruin our desktop by adding hacks to Qt that make it more unstable, they ship pre-release versions of the base libraries and applications that comprise the entire system, and I'm supposed to be happy with that? Please.
Sounds like RH treats KDE the way the treat everything else. Don't like, don't release as open source.
> I was only responding in kind to Black Parrot's post where he claimed that KDE developers are a bunch of "fucking crybabies"
Ah, but I didn't say anything about "KDE developers". My comment was directed toward the krybabies themselves.
(Traditionally it has been the KDE users rather than the KDE developers that have been the big krybabies. Is that trend changing?)
> when in fact RedHat does everyone a disservice and you people can't climb over eachother fast enough to kiss their ass when they do.
I think Red Hat does everyone a big service by trying to make reasonably current stuff work together in each new release, and then letting well enough alone and concentrating on a new release with new goodies in it. You simply can't hold Red Hat responsible for packaging everyone's newly released software for RH 8. They don't do it for anyone else; why should KDE get special treatment?
OSS is ultimately about taking responsibility. Lots of KDE users are more interested in finding some non-KDE entity to blame. That krybaby mentality is why lots of us don't want to be seen using KDE.
> when in fact RedHat does everyone a disservice and you people can't climb over eachother fast enough to kiss their ass when they do.
They sure as heck didn't get a lot of ass-kissing over gcc-2.96. Get a grip on reality.
> An excellent post on why people should stay clear of RedHat. If you expect to have the latest Free Software from the coolest software projects you can not get that with RedHat.
Actually, most of the projects I use either provide RH RPMs for the several most recent versions (and similarly for other popular distros), or else have a system where volunteers provide them and the project links to them.
Wonder why KDE can't do the same?
> The purpose of a large patent portfolio is not to protect your "intellectual property", but to cover such a wide base that anyone who has technology you want or whose patents you might be violating is assured of violating at least one of your patents.
A side effect - presumably intentional - is that it sets up a huge barrier to entry by little guys who want a slice of the economic pie. The big guys can say "I'll let you use mine if you'll let me use yours", but the little guy can't ante up.
> Mod me down, and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Heh heh.
> Heh, yea next time my girlfriend comes over we'll try out that compiling part, thanks.
Actually, it's probably the linking part that you'll be eager to try.
If she's old-fashioned she might insist on a binding right afterward.
> FLOSS-US seems less polished, and much more annoying to fill out even though it was quite a bit shorter than FLOSS
Good points. However, given the source of the survey I think it may be worth filling out anyway. It may have an impact on public policy.
> The Hartford Steam Boiler Insurance Company offers insurance against computer breakdowns for a wide variety of reasons.
Do they cover the Steam Boiler of Death [SBOD]?
> I wonder how long it will be before companies that are hit hard by this will start terminating those responsible.
Never. Instead they will run to Congress demanding the death penalty for 'hackers'.
> The article I read (on yahoo [yahoo.com]) states the unpatched servers were all on the internal network, not the internet, and that they were in use by researchers within microsoft. Let's not jump too quickly on the bash microsoft bandwagon for that.
The fact that it ate their lunch is de facto evidence that they should have patched them all.
> > Would you rather have a system where you have to manually implement every patch, or would you rather have a system where you didn't have any choices which patches were implemented?
> The first choice would lead to a lot more work.
I find the application-specific security patches we do under Linux to be trivially easy:
- Read the announcement to see whether it applies.
- Click link to download the update (else use ncftptget).
- Verify checksum.
- Apply patch by typing one line in su window.
- [Restart daemon, if needed.]
The only time it's tedious is when it's a kernel upgrade (rare) or when it requires downloading something big from a patch-dotted server.> > Explains why they dislike the GPL. It puts a damper on their research and innovation.
> No, it puts a damper on their ability to exploit the freely-offered code and sell it back to people.
I think you missed the sarcasm.
> You can innovate on GPL'ed code, you just can't keep your innovations to yourself.
In lots of contexts, yes you can.
> He goes on to note that SBC is not a villian for doing this - it is after all a valid patent, and that what is needed now is prior art.
No, what's needed now is IP law that promotes innovation rather than blood-sucking.
> RedHat posts KDE 3.1 beta snapshot RPMs, for a beta release of their distro, provides no guarantees that these RPMs will even install (let alone WORK) on the latest RELEASED version of their distro, and that's support?
AFAIK, Red Hat has pursued a policy, since long before KDE existed, of releasing post hoc RPMs only in the case of security patches and serious bug fixes. There have been times in the past when a Red Hat release came out just a few months before a GNOME release, and GNOME got exactly the same treatment KDE is getting now.
Same goes for any other application. Red Hat has never ensured that the latest version of anything will work with the latest version of Red Hat. Instead, they spend their time making sure everything they ship with their next release actually works together.
Sounds to me like KDE adopted a foolish policy - assuming they actually want people to be able to run the latest KDE under the latest Red Hat. (It's a bitch not being able to kick bigger enterprises around, ain't it?)
> Well, no RedHat packages, which is not surprising considering the 'treatment' that KDE was subjected to by RH.
Yes, the availability of Red Hat packages for KDE 3.1 is really shameful.
Fucking KDE crybabies.