Recent versions of Ubuntu (well OK, 10.10) have disabled OSS (the sound system, not open source software) in the kernel. This means that older games which still run fine in all other ways, such as Doom 3, Quake 4 and UT2004, initially won't work at all due the lack of ALSA/Pulse support in them. You can kinda fix this issue with padsp and pasuspender, but you have to
(1) know these commands exist and how to use them (2) change the.desktop files which are used by the games for launching them from the desktop (3) create/edit launcher scripts to incorporate these extra commands so the games will work
With Windows 7? Big deal. So long as the game runs, the sound will work.
Apparently OSS was removed from the 10.10 kernel builds to encourage the elimination of OSS from software. So much for backwards compatibility I guess.
but making users happy just isn't what Microsoft does.
I dunno. Windows 7 and Office 2010 make me pretty happy. Far more slick than anything I've seen in the FOSS world. Can't compare to OS X and its office suites though due to lack of experience.
Believe it or not, Microsoft do make some good products.
Hmm, was supposed to say "I will not blame Apple for that though". Dunno why I typed play - but hey, music was on the mind while typing that I guess.:)
I just want to remind some of our American friends that for the large majority of people outside of the US, we CAN'T use Amazon for music because Amazon are idiots and still haven't expanded availability of MP3 purchases for people outside of the US. I live in Australia and tried to purchase an MP3 from Amazon, and instead got to a page showing the message
(Amazon MP3 purchases are limited to U.S. customers.)
Short of musicians like Jonathan Coulton who have their own pages and can provide to anyone in the world, iTunes is the ONLY commercial marketplace of DRM-free content in my supposedly first-world country. Hence, they have a monopoly. I will not play Apple for that though.
If you're using Winamp, I'd recommend obtaining the ml_ipod plugin (http://mlipod.sourceforge.net), which replaces the.dll bundled with Winamp to interface with iPods and other media players with something far superior. Features here: http://mlipod.sourceforge.net/wiki/Ml_iPod_versus_pmp_iPod
No I am not a shill, I just like the plugin. I doubt the ml_ipod developers could pay me to be a shill even if they wanted to.:)
but why should you have to apologize as a computer game company for making a corny game?
Because this isn't the easy-going days of gaming (as in the 90's). Nowadays, people for some reason want to be offended just so they can get their 2 minutes of Internet fame as they're quoted in multiple sites. Bonus points if they're behind some shitty "family" organization or group who loves the publicity.
'We've asked Amazon not to copy the App Store name because it will confuse and mislead customers.'
Translation:
'We feel that our customers are too fucking stupid to realize that an "App Store" run under the Amazon banner and site has nothing to do with Apple, and that our customers are not smart enough to understand the difference in context.'
Of course Apple might have a point (it's not like computers are well understood by a lot of people even today), but it doesn't particularly bode well for what Apple things of the intellect of its users.
Google, like Apple, have to review the alleged infringement thoroughly before they can decide to take any action. If they don't, they run the risk of removing a legitimate app that was reported by a competitor, or a troll, or for any number of reasons. This is bad for business, and bad for PR. Unfortunately these investigations take their time, and even though you can throw more people into the pool of investigators, the final resolution is never going to be quick enough for app developers who want the infringing app remove IMMEDIATELY as it potentially costs them sales.
I am probably going to sell my legitimately purchased copy of GT5 and continue playing a pirate copy out of principle - and pirate any future games i want to play, sony don't deserve any more of my money if this is how they treat paying customers.
IMHO, the true measure of someone who has principles is someone who is also prepared to GO WITHOUT to prove their point and reinforce their position.. I'm not suggesting you have to abandon your PS3 entirely for what Sony has done, but if you decide to sell your GT5 and then continue to play using a pirated copy, and even worse, pirate any future games you want to play, it's hardly a principled stance. It's just more ammunition for Sony and less for your credentials.
Now, how quickly does it play Netflix movies? What's it's Hulu Plus app like, does it work nicely?
Heh. If you're like me and you live in a backwater, no-name country like, I dunno, Australia, these services doesn't even exist for us. Makes the choice to use an Android phone much more simple.:)
Most of the open source engines are based on outdated code that was provided by id almost a decade ago. There is no open source engine that is even remotely close to CryEngine, id Tech 5 or the last few iterations of the Unreal engine.
Perhaps. However, these "outdated" engines seem to be able to support antialising even when the latest Unreal engine cannot, and I can increase the FOV to something more suitable for a PC monitor compared to the statically set, shallow FOV of most modern games (ports from consoles).
Don't bother. Some people simply don't want to believe that MS Office is actually useful to a lot of people, to the point where it provides functionality not available (easily or otherwise) in LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org. They'd much rather convince you that YOU'RE wrong for wanting those features, how you don't need them (despite their usefulness), and insist on a substandard option for ideological reasons, or to support their own bias.
Version 10! Oh man, and here I am feeling like a chump with Firefox 4. I'm waaaay behind on my Internet power level compared to Chrome. I gotta switch before I completely miss out on the Internet awesomeness provided by the much newer Chrome 10! It's 6 additional levels of awesomeness people!
// For those who lack the ability to detect sarcasm - mod me down and I shall become more powerful than you can imagine.
Yes, the much (not all) of the Slashdot crowd has taken on ludditic and technoemo characteristics in recent years. And the story quality has gone down as well. The general public is now more geeky and technological than the Slashdot crowd.
I agree that the quality of Slashdot articles in recent times has been pretty crap, however I disagree with your assertion that the general public is now more geeky than the Slashdotters. Buying and using the latest tech does NOT automatically make you geeky, unless you are able to understand how that technology works and can manipulate it to your advantage. Slashdotters are generally adverse to trends and fads, which a lot of Apple products are see as. Never mind they've gone on to sell by the truck-load; Slashdotters just don't like seeing people buy fancy gear without knowing the basics of how it works at least. It looks like a waste of good tech that engineers labored over to create, only to be squandered with things like Facebook and lolcats.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't they be LibreOffice Zealots nowadays?
Recent versions of Ubuntu (well OK, 10.10) have disabled OSS (the sound system, not open source software) in the kernel. This means that older games which still run fine in all other ways, such as Doom 3, Quake 4 and UT2004, initially won't work at all due the lack of ALSA/Pulse support in them. You can kinda fix this issue with padsp and pasuspender, but you have to
(1) know these commands exist and how to use them .desktop files which are used by the games for launching them from the desktop
(2) change the
(3) create/edit launcher scripts to incorporate these extra commands so the games will work
With Windows 7? Big deal. So long as the game runs, the sound will work.
Apparently OSS was removed from the 10.10 kernel builds to encourage the elimination of OSS from software. So much for backwards compatibility I guess.
I dunno. Windows 7 and Office 2010 make me pretty happy. Far more slick than anything I've seen in the FOSS world. Can't compare to OS X and its office suites though due to lack of experience.
Believe it or not, Microsoft do make some good products.
You did more than a lot of people world for their (former) homeland. Try not to get too depressed.
I saw what you did there, sneaking in that bit about wearing uniforms as if it means squat in terms of long-term development for a child.
Why is "irony" so damn hard to define? Or more accurately, to define in such a way that this confusion doesn't keep happening?
Very nice, insightful post. Thank you.
Stop dropping your boss' phone and return it before he notices it missing!
Bah. Too much work. Tagging people for speeding is an easier way to perform their duties.
Hmm, was supposed to say "I will not blame Apple for that though". Dunno why I typed play - but hey, music was on the mind while typing that I guess. :)
I just want to remind some of our American friends that for the large majority of people outside of the US, we CAN'T use Amazon for music because Amazon are idiots and still haven't expanded availability of MP3 purchases for people outside of the US. I live in Australia and tried to purchase an MP3 from Amazon, and instead got to a page showing the message
(Amazon MP3 purchases are limited to U.S. customers.)
Short of musicians like Jonathan Coulton who have their own pages and can provide to anyone in the world, iTunes is the ONLY commercial marketplace of DRM-free content in my supposedly first-world country. Hence, they have a monopoly. I will not play Apple for that though.
If you're using Winamp, I'd recommend obtaining the ml_ipod plugin (http://mlipod.sourceforge.net), which replaces the .dll bundled with Winamp to interface with iPods and other media players with something far superior. Features here: http://mlipod.sourceforge.net/wiki/Ml_iPod_versus_pmp_iPod
No I am not a shill, I just like the plugin. I doubt the ml_ipod developers could pay me to be a shill even if they wanted to. :)
Torrent/file sharing sites are kinda like terrorists - Kill one, two more appear.
Because this isn't the easy-going days of gaming (as in the 90's). Nowadays, people for some reason want to be offended just so they can get their 2 minutes of Internet fame as they're quoted in multiple sites. Bonus points if they're behind some shitty "family" organization or group who loves the publicity.
Translation:
'We feel that our customers are too fucking stupid to realize that an "App Store" run under the Amazon banner and site has nothing to do with Apple, and that our customers are not smart enough to understand the difference in context.'
Of course Apple might have a point (it's not like computers are well understood by a lot of people even today), but it doesn't particularly bode well for what Apple things of the intellect of its users.
Google, like Apple, have to review the alleged infringement thoroughly before they can decide to take any action. If they don't, they run the risk of removing a legitimate app that was reported by a competitor, or a troll, or for any number of reasons. This is bad for business, and bad for PR. Unfortunately these investigations take their time, and even though you can throw more people into the pool of investigators, the final resolution is never going to be quick enough for app developers who want the infringing app remove IMMEDIATELY as it potentially costs them sales.
IMHO, the true measure of someone who has principles is someone who is also prepared to GO WITHOUT to prove their point and reinforce their position.. I'm not suggesting you have to abandon your PS3 entirely for what Sony has done, but if you decide to sell your GT5 and then continue to play using a pirated copy, and even worse, pirate any future games you want to play, it's hardly a principled stance. It's just more ammunition for Sony and less for your credentials.
Heh. If you're like me and you live in a backwater, no-name country like, I dunno, Australia, these services doesn't even exist for us. Makes the choice to use an Android phone much more simple. :)
Great. Now I have to learn another two things about business I've been doing wrong all this time!
I didn't know Charlie Sheen was an astronaut.
Perhaps. However, these "outdated" engines seem to be able to support antialising even when the latest Unreal engine cannot, and I can increase the FOV to something more suitable for a PC monitor compared to the statically set, shallow FOV of most modern games (ports from consoles).
Don't bother. Some people simply don't want to believe that MS Office is actually useful to a lot of people, to the point where it provides functionality not available (easily or otherwise) in LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org. They'd much rather convince you that YOU'RE wrong for wanting those features, how you don't need them (despite their usefulness), and insist on a substandard option for ideological reasons, or to support their own bias.
I wonder how this affects the twitter client built into and available out-of-the-box within Ubuntu.
Version 10! Oh man, and here I am feeling like a chump with Firefox 4. I'm waaaay behind on my Internet power level compared to Chrome. I gotta switch before I completely miss out on the Internet awesomeness provided by the much newer Chrome 10! It's 6 additional levels of awesomeness people!
// For those who lack the ability to detect sarcasm - mod me down and I shall become more powerful than you can imagine.
I agree that the quality of Slashdot articles in recent times has been pretty crap, however I disagree with your assertion that the general public is now more geeky than the Slashdotters. Buying and using the latest tech does NOT automatically make you geeky, unless you are able to understand how that technology works and can manipulate it to your advantage. Slashdotters are generally adverse to trends and fads, which a lot of Apple products are see as. Never mind they've gone on to sell by the truck-load; Slashdotters just don't like seeing people buy fancy gear without knowing the basics of how it works at least. It looks like a waste of good tech that engineers labored over to create, only to be squandered with things like Facebook and lolcats.