The complications involved in pregnancy are endless. Many can result in the death or permanent injury of the mother, the baby, or both. In the end, it's safer and more merciful simply to abort the pregnancy -- it's not like we need any more children.
And possible complications justify ending a human life? That's bullshit. First, there are many risks to abortion -- increase in risk for uterine cancer, various potential psychological problems, sterilization, and death. Probably more too.
As far as not needing more children -- the US (and most of the civilized world) is in a state of population decline. The birth rate in the US is about 2.0 children per woman. Replacement rate is 2.2. Spain and Italy are having a population shortage crisis. Most of Europe will follow next, as will we if this keeps up.
Don't have time to research stuff right now -- I'm away from home and busy. This is a blurb from Peroutka's web site:
And while we are on the subject of abortion, President G.W. Bush signed legislation in 2002 that increased funding for International Family Planning to the tune of $480.5 million making this Republican-led administration the biggest supporter of international baby butchery in U.S. history. That is not to mention the millions of dollars that Bush has approved for America's largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.
Recently, many "pro-lifers" heaped voluminous praise upon Mr. Bush when he decided to withhold a miniscule (by comparison) $34 million in federal funds from UNFPA (a UN abortion agency in China). What these ignorant (or deluded) "pro-lifers" failed to notice was that Bush redirected that $34 million to USAID Child Survival Health Program Fund. This fund includes money for "forecasting, purchasing, and supplying contraceptive commodities and other materials necessary for reproductive health programs."
If you find links to specific bills online, posting it here or emailing it to me would be appreciated.
"unplugging" someone prematurely, if there is hope that they could retain consciousness and live on, unless keeping them on such systems is impractical is wrong. If a mother has a miscarriage to no fault of her own, she is not a murderer. It's part of the natural process. There's nothing remotely natural about sticking a pair of forcepts into a woman's uterus and pulling the child partially out and sucking his/her brain out of the skull with a vaccuum.
And the statement that truth is relative is bullshit. Facts are part of the absolute truth. My belief does not define reality, and niether does yours. If I believe that a glass full of pure chlorine is apple juice, that does not make it so. If I drink it, I will still die, regardless of what I believe.
And yes, our nation has in fact abused the term Liberty. If they stuck to the founders' definition, we wouldn't be in a lot of the mess we have today.
There's a difference between being 'poor and struggling' and being unable to raise a child. For every success story of someone who was able to rise to the occasion, there's a childbeater, a drunk, an addict, a deadbeat. This doesn't only affect the parent; it also affects the other parent, the child, and those who know them.
Yes... I guess there's no option other than killing the child. Putting the child up for adoption is not practical, is it? I mean, there's only a 10-15 year waiting list for parents who want to adopt american babies... Ending abortion would just flood the market with babies that wouldn't be provided for.
Are their deaths an acceptable price to pay for destroying the evil, evil terrorists? If so, why isn't the death of your hypothetical unborn child an acceptable price to pay for protecting the potential mother, keeping them and their potential child off the welfare rolls and out of jail, etc.?
First, I'm not voting for Bush, mostly for the reason you outline. I'm also not Voting for Kerry. There's other parties out there.
If it were to protect the LIFE of the mother with a high degree of medical certainty, it is permissable. You're comparing apples to goats. Right to life trumps right to an enjoyable life. Without life, there is nothing. My parents had a pretty shitty life, partially because they were poor and had to struggle to raise two kids. Does that mean they should have aborted my brother and I? Nope. They are finally happy, taking pride that both of thier children have left the nest and made something of themselves.
It's a religious issue. No one else cares. Abortion will continue, whether it's legal or not. So please leave your sentimental bullshit at home, along with your ugly cross and all the other morbid crap that Christianity has foisted upon the world.
Though I am currently a Roman Catholic, I believed abortion was unilaterally wrong before I believed God existed, much less actually became Catholic. Abortion is an abomination that is in direct violation of the natural law (as taught by the likes of Plato and Aristotle, and MUCH later, the Roman Catholic Church).
You're half right. The Church recognizes that it is possible for the state to institute a death penalty in cases where it is necessary to maintain order. The church also states (in the most recent publication of the Catechism) that in modern society in a civilized nation, the death penalty is unnecessary, and is therefore wrong.
Also, the issues you brought up weren't non-negotiables like most of the core life issues (abortion, euthenasia, etc).
And please don't think I'm endorsing Bush. I'm not. I'm voting for Petrouka. He's truly pro-life (Bush really isn't), he's 100% against the war, and for small government. I don't know his stance on the death penalty.
Also, the presidential oppinion on capital punishment is meaningless; that's a state issue, not a federal issue.
Ah yes and at that moment this "life" cannot survive outside the mothers womb. Should something happen to the mother the "life" in her womb dies also. This isn't true further along in the pregnancy. Also, is there conciousness at this point? Can you prove it?
Can you prove there is no consciousness? Nope. Err on the side of caution. Viobility does not life make. What if I was handicapped and could not survive without care from others. Would it be justifiable to kill me?
If I fertalize an egg in a test tube is that life? It certainly won't survive without being moved into a womb. If it dies does that make me a murderer? It's only a few cells? Again, your answer will probably differ from mine based on differances of opinion, philosophy, or religion. This is a highly philosophical issue, not scientific and is completely off topic.
Yes, it is a life in the same exact way. If you ferilize an egg in a test tube and let it die, that does in fact make you a murderer.
This is about truth, not philosophy or opinion or religion. If you are not seeking truth, you're doing something wrong. Perception does not dictate reality.
Again, this is a misunderstanding. We can vote for pro-choice candidates in some cases:
1) All the candidates are pro-choice 2) There are SIGNIFICANT other issues that counterbalance this. 3) Predicted results.
2 and 3 are a bit fuzzy. 3 is easier to explain: if one candidate is pro-life, but has a history of doing nothing to stop abortion, and the other candidate is pro-choice, and doesn't look likely to further the cause of abortion, it's effectively a non-issue. Many argue that Bush has not done enough against abortion (very true -- he signed a bill that gave something like $48 million to planned parenthood, and gave more to some international population control organization that advocates abortion.)
The crux of number 2 is defining what "significant" is. In order to be significant, it has to be another important life issue. For instance, if one candidate was pro-abortion but had nothing else against him, and another candidate was anti-abortion, but wanted to kill all blacks, we could vote for the pro-abortion candidates.
What if my religion said murder was ok? Should the federal government force the states to legalize murder?
Abortion is not just a religious issue. It's an issue of human dignity. A human's first right is the right to life. Without this, no other rights have any meaning.
The moment the sperm meets ovum, it is a life, and a human life, and that life has all of the same rights as he/she will after birth nine months later. He/she has 46 chromosomes, distinct from either the mother and the father. He/she begins to divide on its own. His/her gender, blood type, hair color, eye color, and all other genetic physiological traits are determined. And this person should be treated with the rights and dignity of a human person from birth to natural death.
As the pre-born cannot speak for themselves, we must speak for them.
It's not a lab. It's a portable computer lab, and I'm often hired to demonstrate a new organizational web site. People log on to use the site and for no other purpose. These are basically kiosks.
In a regular lab, there would be more freedom. How much more would depend on the purpose of the lab. I don't want anything unneccessary running. More software = more chances to screw things up.
I couldn't handle the bandwidth usage. I want to push it more prime-time eventually, and even sell these units, but I don't have the resources now. Plus, my rig is a bit of a hack. I want a few more components first... and to find a better case manufacturer. The case I found, while it met my dimension requirements, has really shitty rack-ears which make it hard to screw in to the damn thing. Talk to me in a few months.
In cases like that, most would just buy the second 2-way Opteron and max the RAM out on both of them. Seriously, if you're sporting a rig like that, you can get about 100 clients 2 machines with 4GB each. If you max them both out with RAM, (which going from 4 GB to 16 is only about $5000 each), you can push that to probably over 300 clients with just the two servers, assuming you've got enough disk bandwidth (probably fileserver with 15K RPM drives in a RAID-5 configuration). Segment your gigabit network nicely, and spend about $500 on each client ($350 if you're using CRT's instead of LCD's), and you've saved a TON vs. Microsoft solutions because of liscencing. Plus, management is a breeze! The clients rarely break down, as they have no moving parts. Upgrade an app on the server, and it's already upgraded everywhere else. Only need to backup one fileserver. I've talked to people who have set up LTSP or something similar and not entered the server room for 2 years!
Now, this solution doesn't work for everyone, such as my company, which does content production (using Flash, Maya, and plenty of other graphics-intenive apps that wouldn't work nicely in an LTSP setup). Where would it fit? Telemarketing call centers. Schools. Stock brokers. Largely clerical outfits. Anywhere where the needs of most of your workers are very simple (web, email, office stuff).
The other application is kiosks. My terminals are virtually unhackable. They boot straight into a non-priveleged user account that runs Firefox and Metacity in a chroot-jailed environment. Firefox is totally stripped to the bone -- no menus at all, all the shortcut keys for advanced stuff disabled, no file:/ about:/ etc, CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE is disabled, root logins disabled. They can't do squat. They're trapped in from boot to shutdown. Web browsing is filtered by a proxy, often using a whitelist to one specific site. I offer the kids $20 if they can open another app or go to a different website. No one has collected yet.
No real info on a website or anything. I just started this up. I mostly due web programming for local youth ministry programs (Roman Catholic), and they needed a way to show off the web sites at thier events. So I built this rig and they hire me to set it up and run a night.
The app server is AthlonXP based with gobs of RAM and 2 on-board NIC's. It's running k12LTSP (Fedora Core 2 with LTSP installed and configured). I got the rack at guitar center -- a Road Ready (brand name) 8-space (translation: 8U) rack. I also got the rackmount power strip at Guitar Center. The case was hard to find -- it's a 3U case that's only 16" deep -- most are like 20" or more deep, and that wouldn't fit in the rack.
Now, the reason that this meager server is enough to drive 15 clients is because they run Firefox as a local app, rather than just use X to display it across the network. Most LTSP rigs use dual Xeons with 4GB of RAM and 15,000RPM SCSI disks to drive up to 50 workstations. And usually the limiting factor (particularly with KDE and GNOME) is RAM on the server and disk bandwidth. Now, maybe a dual Opteron rig with 16GB would be able to handle a good bit more.
Amen! I've got a bunch of little mini-ITX systems that I use with LTSP, and I've got an 8U portable rack (the kind used typically for live audio gear) with a beefy server, a 16-port switch, a router/firewall, and other goodies. It's basically a network-in-a-box. I do gigs with a local DJ and set up quick and dirty cyber-cafe's. The boxes boot Linux and run Firefox (with a stripped-down browser.xul so they can't do anything funky like install extensions). People love it! You can run an event anywhere, and have a totally secure bunch of very responsive PC's. On my rig, I can get up to 15 of these guys going, and they're fast for just browsing! And cheap!
I don't have time to search for links to interviews, but he basically stated things like:
Daikatana would be the game that not only changed the industry, but would make people stop playing all games that existed before it.
He whined about the stuff that happenend at iD, and basically took all credit for Quake being good.
Ion Storm would be God's gift to gamers, and the way he ran it is the only intelligent way to run a studio.
Now, post-Ion Storm Romero is a different story. After he was taken down a few knotches, he has come around, and seems to be a pretty cool guy.
As for Newell, his attitude towards anyone who does things contrary to what he wants is a bit much. Like the way he slammed NVIDIA. It's one thing to say that a they have an inferior product. It's another to totally slam thier engineers the way he did.
I must say, it's nice to see someone with as big a name as Molyneux apologize to the community for this. Most people that are in the "industry pioneer" category tend to be just a bitarrogant. He made some claims about features, gamers were pissed they weren't there, and he took the blame. Admirable.
Maybe next time, he won't blab every wild feature he plans.
UT2003 and 2004 -- Linux client shipped at the same time.
QIII -- Linux demo was out BEFORE the Win32 demo. Commercial version shipped simultaneously
Wolfenstien -- simultaneous ship.
NWN -- ok, this sucked. We were promised a simultaneous release, but didn't get the game till a year later.
Doom 3 -- released last month for Win32, coming out for Linux next month. Not perfect, but not bad either.
Yeah, Linux is not the #1 platform for games. But it has some good ones, and a lot of potential. If your #1 priority is games, don't use Linux. If you care about security, stability, and freedom a little more than fragging your opponent in the WW2 FPS of the month, however, it's an option. I still play QIII and UT2003... so do most of my Windows-using friends.
Some of us are pushing for this, particularly those who've studied game theory. I'd personally be happy with either instant runoff or condorcet's method replacing the current plurality voting system.
I personally hate both Kerry and Bush equally, and have pretty much decided that my vote will go to Michael A. Peroutka of the Constitution party.
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The complications involved in pregnancy are endless. Many can result in the death or permanent injury of the mother, the baby, or both. In the end, it's safer and more merciful simply to abort the pregnancy -- it's not like we need any more children.
And possible complications justify ending a human life? That's bullshit. First, there are many risks to abortion -- increase in risk for uterine cancer, various potential psychological problems, sterilization, and death. Probably more too.
Here's something: how about NOT GETTING PREGNANT. Approximately 1% of abortions are because of rape or incest. That means 99% are due to irresponsibility. If abortion on demand were not available as a method of birth control, I think people would think before they act a little bit more. Sex is a serious thing, and has consequences, and should be treated as such.
As far as not needing more children -- the US (and most of the civilized world) is in a state of population decline. The birth rate in the US is about 2.0 children per woman. Replacement rate is 2.2. Spain and Italy are having a population shortage crisis. Most of Europe will follow next, as will we if this keeps up.
The law is still the law whether or not it is enforced or not. Much like 2+2==4 even if you believe otherwise.
Recently, many "pro-lifers" heaped voluminous praise upon Mr. Bush when he decided to withhold a miniscule (by comparison) $34 million in federal funds from UNFPA (a UN abortion agency in China). What these ignorant (or deluded) "pro-lifers" failed to notice was that Bush redirected that $34 million to USAID Child Survival Health Program Fund. This fund includes money for "forecasting, purchasing, and supplying contraceptive commodities and other materials necessary for reproductive health programs."
If you find links to specific bills online, posting it here or emailing it to me would be appreciated.
"unplugging" someone prematurely, if there is hope that they could retain consciousness and live on, unless keeping them on such systems is impractical is wrong. If a mother has a miscarriage to no fault of her own, she is not a murderer. It's part of the natural process. There's nothing remotely natural about sticking a pair of forcepts into a woman's uterus and pulling the child partially out and sucking his/her brain out of the skull with a vaccuum.
And the statement that truth is relative is bullshit. Facts are part of the absolute truth. My belief does not define reality, and niether does yours. If I believe that a glass full of pure chlorine is apple juice, that does not make it so. If I drink it, I will still die, regardless of what I believe.
And yes, our nation has in fact abused the term Liberty. If they stuck to the founders' definition, we wouldn't be in a lot of the mess we have today.
There's a difference between being 'poor and struggling' and being unable to raise a child. For every success story of someone who was able to rise to the occasion, there's a childbeater, a drunk, an addict, a deadbeat. This doesn't only affect the parent; it also affects the other parent, the child, and those who know them.
Yes... I guess there's no option other than killing the child. Putting the child up for adoption is not practical, is it? I mean, there's only a 10-15 year waiting list for parents who want to adopt american babies... Ending abortion would just flood the market with babies that wouldn't be provided for.
Are their deaths an acceptable price to pay for destroying the evil, evil terrorists? If so, why isn't the death of your hypothetical unborn child an acceptable price to pay for protecting the potential mother, keeping them and their potential child off the welfare rolls and out of jail, etc.?
First, I'm not voting for Bush, mostly for the reason you outline. I'm also not Voting for Kerry. There's other parties out there.
If it were to protect the LIFE of the mother with a high degree of medical certainty, it is permissable. You're comparing apples to goats. Right to life trumps right to an enjoyable life. Without life, there is nothing. My parents had a pretty shitty life, partially because they were poor and had to struggle to raise two kids. Does that mean they should have aborted my brother and I? Nope. They are finally happy, taking pride that both of thier children have left the nest and made something of themselves.
It's a religious issue. No one else cares. Abortion will continue, whether it's legal or not. So please leave your sentimental bullshit at home, along with your ugly cross and all the other morbid crap that Christianity has foisted upon the world.
Really? I guess you should tell that to the Atheist and Agnostic Pro-life League.
Though I am currently a Roman Catholic, I believed abortion was unilaterally wrong before I believed God existed, much less actually became Catholic. Abortion is an abomination that is in direct violation of the natural law (as taught by the likes of Plato and Aristotle, and MUCH later, the Roman Catholic Church).
You're half right. The Church recognizes that it is possible for the state to institute a death penalty in cases where it is necessary to maintain order. The church also states (in the most recent publication of the Catechism) that in modern society in a civilized nation, the death penalty is unnecessary, and is therefore wrong.
Also, the issues you brought up weren't non-negotiables like most of the core life issues (abortion, euthenasia, etc).
And please don't think I'm endorsing Bush. I'm not. I'm voting for Petrouka. He's truly pro-life (Bush really isn't), he's 100% against the war, and for small government. I don't know his stance on the death penalty.
Also, the presidential oppinion on capital punishment is meaningless; that's a state issue, not a federal issue.
Ah yes and at that moment this "life" cannot survive outside the mothers womb. Should something happen to the mother the "life" in her womb dies also. This isn't true further along in the pregnancy. Also, is there conciousness at this point? Can you prove it?
Can you prove there is no consciousness? Nope. Err on the side of caution. Viobility does not life make. What if I was handicapped and could not survive without care from others. Would it be justifiable to kill me?
If I fertalize an egg in a test tube is that life? It certainly won't survive without being moved into a womb. If it dies does that make me a murderer? It's only a few cells? Again, your answer will probably differ from mine based on differances of opinion, philosophy, or religion. This is a highly philosophical issue, not scientific and is completely off topic.
Yes, it is a life in the same exact way. If you ferilize an egg in a test tube and let it die, that does in fact make you a murderer.
This is about truth, not philosophy or opinion or religion. If you are not seeking truth, you're doing something wrong. Perception does not dictate reality.
The point is, there has to be a serious justification for the ending of human life. "The condom broke" doesn't cut it.
Again, this is a misunderstanding. We can vote for pro-choice candidates in some cases:
1) All the candidates are pro-choice
2) There are SIGNIFICANT other issues that counterbalance this.
3) Predicted results.
2 and 3 are a bit fuzzy. 3 is easier to explain: if one candidate is pro-life, but has a history of doing nothing to stop abortion, and the other candidate is pro-choice, and doesn't look likely to further the cause of abortion, it's effectively a non-issue. Many argue that Bush has not done enough against abortion (very true -- he signed a bill that gave something like $48 million to planned parenthood, and gave more to some international population control organization that advocates abortion.)
The crux of number 2 is defining what "significant" is. In order to be significant, it has to be another important life issue. For instance, if one candidate was pro-abortion but had nothing else against him, and another candidate was anti-abortion, but wanted to kill all blacks, we could vote for the pro-abortion candidates.
What if my religion said murder was ok? Should the federal government force the states to legalize murder?
Abortion is not just a religious issue. It's an issue of human dignity. A human's first right is the right to life. Without this, no other rights have any meaning.
The moment the sperm meets ovum, it is a life, and a human life, and that life has all of the same rights as he/she will after birth nine months later. He/she has 46 chromosomes, distinct from either the mother and the father. He/she begins to divide on its own. His/her gender, blood type, hair color, eye color, and all other genetic physiological traits are determined. And this person should be treated with the rights and dignity of a human person from birth to natural death.
As the pre-born cannot speak for themselves, we must speak for them.
I'm much more worried about the speculated $350 price tag. That's one great way to keep it out of my pocket.
It's not a lab. It's a portable computer lab, and I'm often hired to demonstrate a new organizational web site. People log on to use the site and for no other purpose. These are basically kiosks.
In a regular lab, there would be more freedom. How much more would depend on the purpose of the lab. I don't want anything unneccessary running. More software = more chances to screw things up.
I couldn't handle the bandwidth usage. I want to push it more prime-time eventually, and even sell these units, but I don't have the resources now. Plus, my rig is a bit of a hack. I want a few more components first... and to find a better case manufacturer. The case I found, while it met my dimension requirements, has really shitty rack-ears which make it hard to screw in to the damn thing. Talk to me in a few months.
--Aaron
Uncompress browser.jar, and edit the various .xul files. Particularly browser.xul.
In cases like that, most would just buy the second 2-way Opteron and max the RAM out on both of them. Seriously, if you're sporting a rig like that, you can get about 100 clients 2 machines with 4GB each. If you max them both out with RAM, (which going from 4 GB to 16 is only about $5000 each), you can push that to probably over 300 clients with just the two servers, assuming you've got enough disk bandwidth (probably fileserver with 15K RPM drives in a RAID-5 configuration). Segment your gigabit network nicely, and spend about $500 on each client ($350 if you're using CRT's instead of LCD's), and you've saved a TON vs. Microsoft solutions because of liscencing. Plus, management is a breeze! The clients rarely break down, as they have no moving parts. Upgrade an app on the server, and it's already upgraded everywhere else. Only need to backup one fileserver. I've talked to people who have set up LTSP or something similar and not entered the server room for 2 years!
Now, this solution doesn't work for everyone, such as my company, which does content production (using Flash, Maya, and plenty of other graphics-intenive apps that wouldn't work nicely in an LTSP setup). Where would it fit? Telemarketing call centers. Schools. Stock brokers. Largely clerical outfits. Anywhere where the needs of most of your workers are very simple (web, email, office stuff).
The other application is kiosks. My terminals are virtually unhackable. They boot straight into a non-priveleged user account that runs Firefox and Metacity in a chroot-jailed environment. Firefox is totally stripped to the bone -- no menus at all, all the shortcut keys for advanced stuff disabled, no file:/ about:/ etc, CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE is disabled, root logins disabled. They can't do squat. They're trapped in from boot to shutdown. Web browsing is filtered by a proxy, often using a whitelist to one specific site. I offer the kids $20 if they can open another app or go to a different website. No one has collected yet.
No real info on a website or anything. I just started this up. I mostly due web programming for local youth ministry programs (Roman Catholic), and they needed a way to show off the web sites at thier events. So I built this rig and they hire me to set it up and run a night.
The app server is AthlonXP based with gobs of RAM and 2 on-board NIC's. It's running k12LTSP (Fedora Core 2 with LTSP installed and configured). I got the rack at guitar center -- a Road Ready (brand name) 8-space (translation: 8U) rack. I also got the rackmount power strip at Guitar Center. The case was hard to find -- it's a 3U case that's only 16" deep -- most are like 20" or more deep, and that wouldn't fit in the rack.
Now, the reason that this meager server is enough to drive 15 clients is because they run Firefox as a local app, rather than just use X to display it across the network. Most LTSP rigs use dual Xeons with 4GB of RAM and 15,000RPM SCSI disks to drive up to 50 workstations. And usually the limiting factor (particularly with KDE and GNOME) is RAM on the server and disk bandwidth. Now, maybe a dual Opteron rig with 16GB would be able to handle a good bit more.
Amen! I've got a bunch of little mini-ITX systems that I use with LTSP, and I've got an 8U portable rack (the kind used typically for live audio gear) with a beefy server, a 16-port switch, a router/firewall, and other goodies. It's basically a network-in-a-box. I do gigs with a local DJ and set up quick and dirty cyber-cafe's. The boxes boot Linux and run Firefox (with a stripped-down browser.xul so they can't do anything funky like install extensions). People love it! You can run an event anywhere, and have a totally secure bunch of very responsive PC's. On my rig, I can get up to 15 of these guys going, and they're fast for just browsing! And cheap!
Daikatana would be the game that not only changed the industry, but would make people stop playing all games that existed before it.
He whined about the stuff that happenend at iD, and basically took all credit for Quake being good.
Ion Storm would be God's gift to gamers, and the way he ran it is the only intelligent way to run a studio.
Now, post-Ion Storm Romero is a different story. After he was taken down a few knotches, he has come around, and seems to be a pretty cool guy.
As for Newell, his attitude towards anyone who does things contrary to what he wants is a bit much. Like the way he slammed NVIDIA. It's one thing to say that a they have an inferior product. It's another to totally slam thier engineers the way he did.
A few flaws with this:
1) It's a console game. No patch. No hope of having more CPU power in a year.
2) It was supposed to be something that affected gameplay as well... not just prettiness.
- ...brilliant audio, a fairly good storyline AND lady grey has nice boobies boot!
13 year old fanboys... you don't say!I must say, it's nice to see someone with as big a name as Molyneux apologize to the community for this. Most people that are in the "industry pioneer" category tend to be just a bit arrogant. He made some claims about features, gamers were pissed they weren't there, and he took the blame. Admirable.
Maybe next time, he won't blab every wild feature he plans.
UT2003 and 2004 -- Linux client shipped at the same time.
QIII -- Linux demo was out BEFORE the Win32 demo. Commercial version shipped simultaneously
Wolfenstien -- simultaneous ship.
NWN -- ok, this sucked. We were promised a simultaneous release, but didn't get the game till a year later.
Doom 3 -- released last month for Win32, coming out for Linux next month. Not perfect, but not bad either.
Yeah, Linux is not the #1 platform for games. But it has some good ones, and a lot of potential. If your #1 priority is games, don't use Linux. If you care about security, stability, and freedom a little more than fragging your opponent in the WW2 FPS of the month, however, it's an option. I still play QIII and UT2003... so do most of my Windows-using friends.
Some of us are pushing for this, particularly those who've studied game theory. I'd personally be happy with either instant runoff or condorcet's method replacing the current plurality voting system.
I personally hate both Kerry and Bush equally, and have pretty much decided that my vote will go to Michael A. Peroutka of the Constitution party.