I have OpenOffice installed right now. It's a nice product for a secretary, but useless for a publisher. All word processors are not created equal, and for someone who works with words and publishing on a professional level, OpenOffice is way, way short on features.
One of my best friends is an engineer, who tells me that the number of built-in functions in OpenOffice is only a fraction of the number of built-in function in Quattro Pro (part of WordPerfect Office).
So, if you are a coder who only now and then needs to type a letter or work on your personal budget, I think OpenOffice is a great choice. But if you are a publisher trying to bring titles to press or an engineer trying to do some design calculations, OpenOffice is just not a pro-quality tool.
The same goes for GIMP, by the way... As someone who works in publishing, I can tell you that GIMP lacks important features found in Corel's Draw+PhotoPaint package, despite what some clueless Web designers will tell you.
As for Corel WordPerfect or Draw, just let me laugh. I don't think the difference of quality and features between the two can justify to PAY for WordPerfect
Either you haven't used WordPerfect or you have no idea about the publishing industry. StarOffice doesn't even come close to WordPerfect Office or MS Office. And with WordPerfect gone, we are back to no usable office solutions for Linux, a major stumbling block to using Linux for anything in the real world. That's right, (gasp) StarOffice isn't good enough. Don't even bother to try to mention Applix, KOffice, or AbiWord+Gnumeric. Now that's something to laugh about.
You know what, i use linux, and only linux, some people around me use linux and only linux. But none of those who use linux and only linux play games. Simply. Nobody tried to say that, but, for many of us, fun is more in programming a module for the kernel or some kde app.
What you're saying, if I'm not mistaken, is what so many other people are saying in this story: "Linux is for PROGRAMMERS and ADMINS ONLY. Everybody else, GET THE HELL OUT!"
If they sold any of the corel products I would buy them, I was waiting Eagerly to buy them. they never sold them or allowed purchase.
You weren't watching very closely. They were on the market for a full year. I bought Corel WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux and Corel Draw 9 for Linux off a retail shelf at retail prices at my local CompUSA and have used them every day since. Corel has finally withdrawn them due to a "lack of interest" in non-free software -- according to their sales guy, sales of Linux products weren't nearly enough to justify the minimal development effort.
Pooling money together to keep Loki alive for the few people who bothered to buy their games is just plain silly... Loki wasn't in the business of charity; nobody should be asked for charity to keep Loki in business.
Hey, Loki provided something valuable to me and if I'm willing to pay to try to keep it coming, what the hell is wrong with that?
I'm not asking you to chip in your $100. But why should you seek to prevent me from chipping in my $100? Just because you're an asshole and want to prevent me from supporting what I want to support?
We watched as you and your kind *RUINED* the Amiga and Atari ST computers as viable systems with your bullshit and half-baked ideas and it'll be a cold day in hell before we'll let you do the same kind of crap to Linux. So pack your bags and get out. You won't be missed.
Care to be more specific about what you mean? About what's upsetting you about my post, specifically? If you're going to get huffy, at least try to do so clearly so that others can hear your point of view.
That said... I do have to wonder how wanting games and good office software for Linux equates to destroying the Amiga and Atari communities...
Re:This sucks, and it's the fault of Linux users.
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Loki Games Closing?
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I know people who bought the Linux version *after* they bought the Windows version.
There's nothing wrong with this.
It all depends on whether you are too cheap to support the growth of Linux. Many people don't feel that's a good investment. The result is that Loki closes up shop and puts the final nail in the "Linux for the desktop" coffin.
I'd hate to see such gems of modern gaming as Tribes 2 and Kohan become unavalible for the Linux platform suddenly.
Well, that's exactly what's going to happen.
The same could have been said for Corel's products -- there is nothing else comparable to Corel Draw for Linux or Corel WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux, but both have been discontinued due to nonexistent sales. I'm lucky enough to own both, but people who want to buy WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux today are out of luck, because Corel won't sell it to you and neither will anyone else.
In fact, it was Corel's second try... Corel Draw 6 (IIRC) was released for Linux years ago, and pulled due to lack of sales.
I see a lot of people here complaining that it's about capitalism vs. communism, or about "they didn't release the games I want" but I think, when it really comes down to truth, things look something like this:
Linux users don't pay for software. Ever. They're too cheap.
Loki games aren't out there for warezing. You gotta buy them.
Windows is everywhere and easy to warez.
Windows games are everywhere and easy to warez.
It's nothing to do with a utopian fantasy about free software... Linux users just want free beer. It's a sad thing for those of us who want to use Linux for anything else. We get told over and over "Use the right tool for the right job. What you want is Windows." Hmmm, Windows to run office software. Windows to browse the Web with a decent browser. Windows to play games. Well, as it turns out that's all I use a computer for these days.
So, in essence, what the "community" tells the rest of us, day in and day out, is "get lost and go back to Windows." Not because of any principle, but because they're deathly afraid they might become mainstream.
Sad for those of us who have never owned windows. I came up through the Unix world, starting in the mid '80s and I'm comfortable with *nix systems I still have a VT100 (yes, a real one) sitting in the corner that I use for some things. But if they're saying that Linux is for coding only, and thus modern Unix is for coding only... I guess I've outgrown Unix and will have to invest in Windows.
Ramble, ramble, ramble...
Back to on-topic... in short, yes, the games, and all of the hard work, will likely disappear into a black hole.
These congressmen and senators are merely bought and paid for, trying to keep their jobs.
In the end, the problem is the complete lack of education and critical thinking among the voting American public, now raised in a completely culture-bound fashion on the western media/money machine, which is supported in large part by the very same big business and big energy who buy our representatives... the same big business and big energy interests who would be harmed by limitless energy.
Media & pop culture: new opiate for the masses. Keep the kids & voters stupid with MTV and Britney Spears while diverting the profits made from these opiates into the pockets of senators and congressmen who will (in exchange) do their damndest to keep the status quo. Voila, the rich stay rich, the public knows nothing, and science and progress die a horrible, anonymous death.
Welcome to the world of capitalism.
Re:Entertainment and limited leisure time.
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Loki Games Closing?
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· Score: 2
Gaming on Linux: Install Red Hat 7.2, go to NVidia site to download drivers, rpm -i drivers, run Loki installer.
Gaming on Windows: Install Windows 2000, go to NVidia site to download drivers, double-click on drivers, run Windows game installer.
How is that hard? Or are you one of those have-cake-and-eat-it-too idiots who won't use NVidia with Linux because they won't open-source their drivers, and then has the nerve to complain that all of those non-vendor drivers for the other cards are hard to use?
Honestly...
What about the UPDATES? Will they be freed?
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Loki Games Closing?
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· Score: 2
There are a number of updates that are required to keep Loki games running under new distributions or with new hardware.
Loki used to offer these for download as executables, but lately they switched over to an auto-update system which connects to a Loki server, downloads and installs the update for you, meaning that I haven't been able to archive updates for more recent games.
What will happen to the updates? PLEASE tell me that Loki will release the updates to the community so that their products will continue to work (and be installable on newer systems) after they are gone!
Wine is crap so far. And it's been crap for years now.
There seem to be all of these Wine fans crawling around saying "Wine is great" and "Wine is beautiful" and "Wine is not an emulator" and "Wine will save Linux and make Loki obsolete because someday we will all run Windows apps under Linux!"
Well right now, the emperor has no clothes. NONE of the major Wine trees right now runs anything terribly well. Wine may not be an emulator, but it certainly sucks memory, processor time, and stability like one.
I for one prefer native software, thanks. Oh yeah, I knew you were going to say that: "Wine IS native software! Wine is an API, not an emulator, duh!"
Fine. Let me make it simple... I for one prefer non-Wine software!
As in "software that works."
Like Loki's.
*sigh*
Re:Use operating systems for what they're good for
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Loki Games Closing?
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I don't want to pay $300 for Windows. I'll buy a PS2 before I'll shell out $300 for Windows.
Why are some people so against the concept of playing games under Linux? It seems only natural: if you prefer Linux, use Linux all the time, then why wouldn't you want to play your games in Linux, if Linux is capable.
And Loki has certainly proved that Linux is capable.
Yet some people in the Linux community have this angst about games showing up for Linux, like it will ruin Linux... Sort of like the Palm users feeling terribly threatened by color displays and fast CPUs.
It makes no sense. Games for Linux can only be a good thing. The Linux world is *smaller* and will grow *more slowly* because of Loki's death.
Well, friend, if you don't buy games, there won't be any more games, so you *for sure* won't get any games you were interested in ported to Linux, and you will *continue* to need Windows to play all of your games.
Do you feel smarter now, or do you just feel a little bit lighter in the pocketbook for all the copies of Windows you will continue to buy for the next decade, just to play some games...
Or do you just warez your Windows?
Sometimes I get very disappointed in the Linux "community" who seems to be more bark than bite.
This sucks, and it's the fault of Linux users.
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Loki Games Closing?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I see all these people saying "if you're a gamer, you want the game now and you want it cheap, so why pay a premium for a late Loki game when I can just dual-boot?"
This from people who complain about the "Microsoft Tax."
Well, folks, you have to decide: are you going to be a "hardcore gamer" and pay the Microsoft Tax you claim to hate so much just so you can have a game three months sooner or $10 cheaper, or are you going to put your money where your mouth is and support Linux companies?
I for one own every game Loki released, and I paid for every one of them, even one or two I didn't care for, just to support Linux gaming. I can hear the crazy free-market folks already who will flame me (as they do every Loki story) saying that the market should decide, that I shouldn't have bought games I didn't like, that Loki should fail if it is destined to fail.
Well, apparently it was. Feel better now? I certainly don't. Too bad so few Linux users are willing, as I have been, to put my money where my mouth is. On a similar note, I also bought the Corel Draw for Linux and Corel WordPerfect Office for Linux retail software packages before Corel withdrew them due to (direct quote from a sales inquiry to Corel) "lack of interest in non-free software."
I'm beginning to think that Linux will never grow out of Free Speech and Free Beer. Both are great, but alone they are not enough to make for a full life, or to build a userbase beyond geek-freeks.
Goodbye, Loki. I for one will miss your excellent ports when I am struggling to keep the truly abysmal but ever-so-free "Wine" emulator [or *sigh* not an emulator] running over the next few years.
It's down to mainboard manufacturers. Some of them are very cheap.
I paid extra for an Asus board. It's got a VIA Athlon chipset, and I'm running a 1GHz T-bird with five PCI slots and the AGP slot full. Three of the PCI cards have PCI bridges on them; this machine has:
2x 10/100 Ethernet ports
3x LVD SCSI channels
2x PCI Audio
1x Conexant NTSC video
1x Philips MPEG hardware encoder/decoder
4x USB channels (3 being used)
768MB RAM at PC133 2-2-2
and GeForce2-Pro in the AGP slot
This running with the Nvidia drivers under Linux. I'm running kernel 2.4 and getting uptimes in weeks, with at times very heavy I/O and multimedia IRQ load. The root filesystem is using the VIA 686b UDMA-100 support, while the data filesystems are on LVD SCSI.
The Athlon chipsets don't have to suck... It's all down to the quality of hardware you buy. No-name import == bad for stability, in my experience, and P4 boards are no different! Some of the current no-name P3 and P4 boards on the market are total crap, but not because of the chipset... because of shoddy design.
Re:I would prefer the other way around
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Debian NetBSD
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· Score: 3, Insightful
What is wrong with the FreeBSD kernel?
FreeBSD doesn't have as many drivers for esoteric hardware. Not a technical advantage for Linux so much as a side effect of the greater market penetration.
I'd bet the average Slashdotter is probably a (-3, -5), with the first number increasing sharply with the likelihood that said person has ever held a job, and the second number trending gradually upwards with age.
I've held a number of white-collar jobs over the years and am at least a decade older than most of the Slashdot readership. I rated a (-8,-5) or so. Seems like most right-wingers these days have this fantasy that all mature people are really stark raving capitalists.
Not so. Some of us are still in favor of fairness and humanity, even in middle age.
First of all, the burden of proof only exists in a trial situation, not in a discussion (i.e. 1st amendment) situation, as this clearly is.
Second, as I've already mentioned, the sources you asked for are a matter of public record. If you want to post your address here, I'll get copies of the minutes for some telling meetings and hearings *sent* to you, if you are incapable of doing any kind of research yourself.
It is incumbent on a citizen to inform himself through research and learning. Every citizen is not sent a copy of the entire congressional record, but you are expected to know enough to obey the law regardless, since ignorance is not a defense. By the way, the US congressional record, like the Utah congressional record, is a matter of public record... these records include the votes of the membership.
So what sort of "proof" do you suggest that I obtain? A confession from the Mormon hierarchy?
Are the records of the ACLU and the Utah courts system and legistlature not enough? Consult them and be enlightened. They're a matter of public record.
I think most educated people are aware of this (certainly most of the people at my university were) and in my humanities department at least, were discussing the implications for the future of US society.
Over the last 100 years we've had mass migration into centralized urban areas and a kind of centralized media culture.
I think it would be terribly interesting if, over the next 100 years, we saw a mass exodus of the intelligencia out of media culture and perhaps even physically out of the US and EU. It sounds far-fetched, and yet there are so many very intelligent students who graduated at the same time as me whose only goal is to get out of the western market lifestyle at any cost because they feel that the nature of ideas has been fundamentally changed, from a kind of forum for the enrichment of man to a tightly-controlled, tightly-protected profit-making establishment serving only this new caste system.
Many of them in the technical fields feel that independent thought is not only threatened, but is dangerous to engage in. Witness Skylarov. It is truly bizarre to hear so many different friends who don't know each other all talking about moving out of the US and the west, because of the current intellictual environment, to the desert, to the jungle, to south america, to asia...
I guess we can all be thankful that there was no big scribe's union when the printing press was invented.
This analogy is broken. The problem isn't the unions. In fact, many of the entertainers' unions hate the RIAA/MPAA as much as the tech crowd does. Many performers (I have personal experience with musicians) are going broke while the RIAA/MPAA use their labor and creativity to rake in the dough.
The RIAA/MPAA are not the scribes, they are the purveyors; they take what the scribes do and distribute it to the public. The RIAA/MPAA are the ultimate triumph of the bloodsucking middleman out to make a buck, nothing more, nothing less.
I take exception to your implications that the "Mormons" are running the olympics and also politics. Just what do you mean by "Mormons"? Do you have any proof of this "mormon conspiracy"? I live in Salt Lake City.
I don't need proof of any Mormon conspiracy. I also live here. But unlike you (obviously) I am not Mormon. Poor me.
For anyone considering moving here: don't. The most important parts of the downtown area are speech-restricted (Really! With guards and everything!) because entire city blocks were bought from the city by the Mormon church in a back-room deal a few years back that generated tons of controversy. The ACLU has taken up the cause, but as of today, if you were to go downtown and say "I'm having a HELL of a bad day!" under your breath, you would likely be accosted by a guard. Don't even try to light up a cigarette or drink coffee downtown!
Over 95% of all government (local, city, county, state, plus senators and congressmen sent to DC) of Utah are Mormon. Good luck getting any kind of progressive or diversity-oriented discussion going on in Utah politics; all non-Mormons have no voice in Utah government.
At job interviews for private industry in Utah, you will be asked what (Mormon) ward you belong to, and whether you have gone on a Mormon (i.e. conversion) mission to another country yet. You will be asked if you smoke, drink, or have coffee. If you don't give the right answers, you won't get the job. You soon learn to judge immediately in your dealings whether the person you're talking to is Mormon or non-Mormon. If they're Mormon and you're non, you mentally give up and move on to the next task of the day because you realize that they've figured out you're a non and are ignoring whatever you say because it's coming from "someone with different [i.e. lesser] values."
In most of Utah, you cannot buy real beer, but must by "special" beer with limited alcohol content, and then only on weekdays, because it's illegal to sell on weekends. When Salt Lake mayor Rocky Anderson recently campaigned to relax some of the alcohol-related laws in Salt Lake City in anticipation of the Olympics, the radio waves and print industry were loaded down with Mormon-church-sponsored controversy about how "we should show the world just what moral living is" -- a kind of "we'll convert those nasty French drunks" mentality. They took out billboards and paid for commercials. People made public service announcements explaining how "there is no such thing as responsible drinking."
If you have children, they will have no friends in school because the Mormon parents will not let your children play with them, because "they don't have the same values we have." It doesn't matter if you are Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, Buddhist, or Hare-Krishna, you and your children are considered to be under Satan's influence if you are not Mormon. God help you if you and your children are (*gasp*) agnostics, atheists, or simply not religious. You children may even be graded down in school or sent to the principal's office for refusing to participate in religious activity during school hours.
The only local independent paper of repute (The Salt Lake Tribune) is in the grips of battle right now with the Mormon church, which already owns the other major media outlets (including the most popular television stations in the area and the other major newspaper) and have worked out a back-room leverage deal to own the Tribune also, though there are (thank god) lawsuits going on here as well to try to keep the Tribune independent. Outcries from local non-Mormons are growing more and more faint as the Mormon church tightents its grasp on all public forums (even at the street-level, as mentioned at the very beginning of this post).
Of course, The Church[TM] says that the 2002 olympics will *not* be the "Mormon Olympics" but everyong living in Salt Lake City knows otherwise, and the media exclusivity of the olympic games fits perfectly with the track record of Bonneville International, owned by the church, owner of most local (discussion+competition verboten) media outlets.
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I have OpenOffice installed right now. It's a nice product for a secretary, but useless for a publisher. All word processors are not created equal, and for someone who works with words and publishing on a professional level, OpenOffice is way, way short on features.
One of my best friends is an engineer, who tells me that the number of built-in functions in OpenOffice is only a fraction of the number of built-in function in Quattro Pro (part of WordPerfect Office).
So, if you are a coder who only now and then needs to type a letter or work on your personal budget, I think OpenOffice is a great choice. But if you are a publisher trying to bring titles to press or an engineer trying to do some design calculations, OpenOffice is just not a pro-quality tool.
The same goes for GIMP, by the way... As someone who works in publishing, I can tell you that GIMP lacks important features found in Corel's Draw+PhotoPaint package, despite what some clueless Web designers will tell you.
As for Corel WordPerfect or Draw, just let me laugh. I don't think the difference of quality and features between the two can justify to PAY for WordPerfect
Either you haven't used WordPerfect or you have no idea about the publishing industry. StarOffice doesn't even come close to WordPerfect Office or MS Office. And with WordPerfect gone, we are back to no usable office solutions for Linux, a major stumbling block to using Linux for anything in the real world. That's right, (gasp) StarOffice isn't good enough. Don't even bother to try to mention Applix, KOffice, or AbiWord+Gnumeric. Now that's something to laugh about.
You know what, i use linux, and only linux, some people around me use linux and only linux. But none of those who use linux and only linux play games. Simply. Nobody tried to say that, but, for many of us, fun is more in programming a module for the kernel or some kde app.
What you're saying, if I'm not mistaken, is what so many other people are saying in this story: "Linux is for PROGRAMMERS and ADMINS ONLY. Everybody else, GET THE HELL OUT!"
If they sold any of the corel products I would buy them, I was waiting Eagerly to buy them. they never sold them or allowed purchase.
You weren't watching very closely. They were on the market for a full year. I bought Corel WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux and Corel Draw 9 for Linux off a retail shelf at retail prices at my local CompUSA and have used them every day since. Corel has finally withdrawn them due to a "lack of interest" in non-free software -- according to their sales guy, sales of Linux products weren't nearly enough to justify the minimal development effort.
Pooling money together to keep Loki alive for the few people who bothered to buy their games is just plain silly... Loki wasn't in the business of charity; nobody should be asked for charity to keep Loki in business.
Hey, Loki provided something valuable to me and if I'm willing to pay to try to keep it coming, what the hell is wrong with that?
I'm not asking you to chip in your $100. But why should you seek to prevent me from chipping in my $100? Just because you're an asshole and want to prevent me from supporting what I want to support?
We watched as you and your kind *RUINED* the Amiga and Atari ST computers as viable systems with your bullshit and half-baked ideas and it'll be a cold day in hell before we'll let you do the same kind of crap to Linux. So pack your bags and get out. You won't be missed.
Care to be more specific about what you mean? About what's upsetting you about my post, specifically? If you're going to get huffy, at least try to do so clearly so that others can hear your point of view.
That said... I do have to wonder how wanting games and good office software for Linux equates to destroying the Amiga and Atari communities...
I know people who bought the Linux version *after* they bought the Windows version.
There's nothing wrong with this.
It all depends on whether you are too cheap to support the growth of Linux. Many people don't feel that's a good investment. The result is that Loki closes up shop and puts the final nail in the "Linux for the desktop" coffin.
Well, that's exactly what's going to happen.
The same could have been said for Corel's products -- there is nothing else comparable to Corel Draw for Linux or Corel WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux, but both have been discontinued due to nonexistent sales. I'm lucky enough to own both, but people who want to buy WordPerfect Office 2000 for Linux today are out of luck, because Corel won't sell it to you and neither will anyone else.
In fact, it was Corel's second try... Corel Draw 6 (IIRC) was released for Linux years ago, and pulled due to lack of sales.
I see a lot of people here complaining that it's about capitalism vs. communism, or about "they didn't release the games I want" but I think, when it really comes down to truth, things look something like this:
It's nothing to do with a utopian fantasy about free software... Linux users just want free beer. It's a sad thing for those of us who want to use Linux for anything else. We get told over and over "Use the right tool for the right job. What you want is Windows." Hmmm, Windows to run office software. Windows to browse the Web with a decent browser. Windows to play games. Well, as it turns out that's all I use a computer for these days.
So, in essence, what the "community" tells the rest of us, day in and day out, is "get lost and go back to Windows." Not because of any principle, but because they're deathly afraid they might become mainstream.
Sad for those of us who have never owned windows. I came up through the Unix world, starting in the mid '80s and I'm comfortable with *nix systems I still have a VT100 (yes, a real one) sitting in the corner that I use for some things. But if they're saying that Linux is for coding only, and thus modern Unix is for coding only... I guess I've outgrown Unix and will have to invest in Windows.
Ramble, ramble, ramble...
Back to on-topic... in short, yes, the games, and all of the hard work, will likely disappear into a black hole.
These congressmen and senators are merely bought and paid for, trying to keep their jobs.
In the end, the problem is the complete lack of education and critical thinking among the voting American public, now raised in a completely culture-bound fashion on the western media/money machine, which is supported in large part by the very same big business and big energy who buy our representatives... the same big business and big energy interests who would be harmed by limitless energy.
Media & pop culture: new opiate for the masses. Keep the kids & voters stupid with MTV and Britney Spears while diverting the profits made from these opiates into the pockets of senators and congressmen who will (in exchange) do their damndest to keep the status quo. Voila, the rich stay rich, the public knows nothing, and science and progress die a horrible, anonymous death.
Welcome to the world of capitalism.
Gaming on Linux: Install Red Hat 7.2, go to NVidia site to download drivers, rpm -i drivers, run Loki installer.
Gaming on Windows: Install Windows 2000, go to NVidia site to download drivers, double-click on drivers, run Windows game installer.
How is that hard? Or are you one of those have-cake-and-eat-it-too idiots who won't use NVidia with Linux because they won't open-source their drivers, and then has the nerve to complain that all of those non-vendor drivers for the other cards are hard to use?
Honestly...
There are a number of updates that are required to keep Loki games running under new distributions or with new hardware.
Loki used to offer these for download as executables, but lately they switched over to an auto-update system which connects to a Loki server, downloads and installs the update for you, meaning that I haven't been able to archive updates for more recent games.
What will happen to the updates? PLEASE tell me that Loki will release the updates to the community so that their products will continue to work (and be installable on newer systems) after they are gone!
Wine is crap so far. And it's been crap for years now.
There seem to be all of these Wine fans crawling around saying "Wine is great" and "Wine is beautiful" and "Wine is not an emulator" and "Wine will save Linux and make Loki obsolete because someday we will all run Windows apps under Linux!"
Well right now, the emperor has no clothes. NONE of the major Wine trees right now runs anything terribly well. Wine may not be an emulator, but it certainly sucks memory, processor time, and stability like one.
I for one prefer native software, thanks. Oh yeah, I knew you were going to say that: "Wine IS native software! Wine is an API, not an emulator, duh!"
Fine. Let me make it simple... I for one prefer non-Wine software!
As in "software that works."
Like Loki's.
*sigh*
I don't want to pay $300 for Windows. I'll buy a PS2 before I'll shell out $300 for Windows.
Why are some people so against the concept of playing games under Linux? It seems only natural: if you prefer Linux, use Linux all the time, then why wouldn't you want to play your games in Linux, if Linux is capable.
And Loki has certainly proved that Linux is capable.
Yet some people in the Linux community have this angst about games showing up for Linux, like it will ruin Linux... Sort of like the Palm users feeling terribly threatened by color displays and fast CPUs.
It makes no sense. Games for Linux can only be a good thing. The Linux world is *smaller* and will grow *more slowly* because of Loki's death.
Well, friend, if you don't buy games, there won't be any more games, so you *for sure* won't get any games you were interested in ported to Linux, and you will *continue* to need Windows to play all of your games.
Do you feel smarter now, or do you just feel a little bit lighter in the pocketbook for all the copies of Windows you will continue to buy for the next decade, just to play some games...
Or do you just warez your Windows?
Sometimes I get very disappointed in the Linux "community" who seems to be more bark than bite.
I see all these people saying "if you're a gamer, you want the game now and you want it cheap, so why pay a premium for a late Loki game when I can just dual-boot?"
This from people who complain about the "Microsoft Tax."
Well, folks, you have to decide: are you going to be a "hardcore gamer" and pay the Microsoft Tax you claim to hate so much just so you can have a game three months sooner or $10 cheaper, or are you going to put your money where your mouth is and support Linux companies?
I for one own every game Loki released, and I paid for every one of them, even one or two I didn't care for, just to support Linux gaming. I can hear the crazy free-market folks already who will flame me (as they do every Loki story) saying that the market should decide, that I shouldn't have bought games I didn't like, that Loki should fail if it is destined to fail.
Well, apparently it was. Feel better now? I certainly don't. Too bad so few Linux users are willing, as I have been, to put my money where my mouth is. On a similar note, I also bought the Corel Draw for Linux and Corel WordPerfect Office for Linux retail software packages before Corel withdrew them due to (direct quote from a sales inquiry to Corel) "lack of interest in non-free software."
I'm beginning to think that Linux will never grow out of Free Speech and Free Beer. Both are great, but alone they are not enough to make for a full life, or to build a userbase beyond geek-freeks.
Goodbye, Loki. I for one will miss your excellent ports when I am struggling to keep the truly abysmal but ever-so-free "Wine" emulator [or *sigh* not an emulator] running over the next few years.
It's down to mainboard manufacturers. Some of them are very cheap.
I paid extra for an Asus board. It's got a VIA Athlon chipset, and I'm running a 1GHz T-bird with five PCI slots and the AGP slot full. Three of the PCI cards have PCI bridges on them; this machine has:
2x 10/100 Ethernet ports
3x LVD SCSI channels
2x PCI Audio
1x Conexant NTSC video
1x Philips MPEG hardware encoder/decoder
4x USB channels (3 being used)
768MB RAM at PC133 2-2-2
and GeForce2-Pro in the AGP slot
This running with the Nvidia drivers under Linux. I'm running kernel 2.4 and getting uptimes in weeks, with at times very heavy I/O and multimedia IRQ load. The root filesystem is using the VIA 686b UDMA-100 support, while the data filesystems are on LVD SCSI.
The Athlon chipsets don't have to suck... It's all down to the quality of hardware you buy. No-name import == bad for stability, in my experience, and P4 boards are no different! Some of the current no-name P3 and P4 boards on the market are total crap, but not because of the chipset... because of shoddy design.
Oops. Rhetorically ironic question should read: "Theo losing control of OpenBSD?"
I had too much crack as well.
Theo losing control of NetBSD?
NetBSD out of business?
Too much crack?
What is wrong with the FreeBSD kernel?
FreeBSD doesn't have as many drivers for esoteric hardware. Not a technical advantage for Linux so much as a side effect of the greater market penetration.
But that's the way it is, nevertheless.
Anybody try what was in CVS? Anybody try 4.2.0 yet? Does the Cyber9385 (trident) actually work now, or is it still broken?
I'd bet the average Slashdotter is probably a (-3, -5), with the first number increasing sharply with the likelihood that said person has ever held a job, and the second number trending gradually upwards with age.
I've held a number of white-collar jobs over the years and am at least a decade older than most of the Slashdot readership. I rated a (-8,-5) or so. Seems like most right-wingers these days have this fantasy that all mature people are really stark raving capitalists.
Not so. Some of us are still in favor of fairness and humanity, even in middle age.
First of all, the burden of proof only exists in a trial situation, not in a discussion (i.e. 1st amendment) situation, as this clearly is.
Second, as I've already mentioned, the sources you asked for are a matter of public record. If you want to post your address here, I'll get copies of the minutes for some telling meetings and hearings *sent* to you, if you are incapable of doing any kind of research yourself.
It is incumbent on a citizen to inform himself through research and learning. Every citizen is not sent a copy of the entire congressional record, but you are expected to know enough to obey the law regardless, since ignorance is not a defense. By the way, the US congressional record, like the Utah congressional record, is a matter of public record... these records include the votes of the membership.
So what sort of "proof" do you suggest that I obtain? A confession from the Mormon hierarchy?
Are the records of the ACLU and the Utah courts system and legistlature not enough? Consult them and be enlightened. They're a matter of public record.
I think most educated people are aware of this (certainly most of the people at my university were) and in my humanities department at least, were discussing the implications for the future of US society.
Over the last 100 years we've had mass migration into centralized urban areas and a kind of centralized media culture.
I think it would be terribly interesting if, over the next 100 years, we saw a mass exodus of the intelligencia out of media culture and perhaps even physically out of the US and EU. It sounds far-fetched, and yet there are so many very intelligent students who graduated at the same time as me whose only goal is to get out of the western market lifestyle at any cost because they feel that the nature of ideas has been fundamentally changed, from a kind of forum for the enrichment of man to a tightly-controlled, tightly-protected profit-making establishment serving only this new caste system.
Many of them in the technical fields feel that independent thought is not only threatened, but is dangerous to engage in. Witness Skylarov. It is truly bizarre to hear so many different friends who don't know each other all talking about moving out of the US and the west, because of the current intellictual environment, to the desert, to the jungle, to south america, to asia...
I guess we can all be thankful that there was no big scribe's union when the printing press was invented.
This analogy is broken. The problem isn't the unions. In fact, many of the entertainers' unions hate the RIAA/MPAA as much as the tech crowd does. Many performers (I have personal experience with musicians) are going broke while the RIAA/MPAA use their labor and creativity to rake in the dough.
The RIAA/MPAA are not the scribes, they are the purveyors; they take what the scribes do and distribute it to the public. The RIAA/MPAA are the ultimate triumph of the bloodsucking middleman out to make a buck, nothing more, nothing less.
Please don't blame unions.
I don't need proof of any Mormon conspiracy. I also live here. But unlike you (obviously) I am not Mormon. Poor me.
For anyone considering moving here: don't. The most important parts of the downtown area are speech-restricted (Really! With guards and everything!) because entire city blocks were bought from the city by the Mormon church in a back-room deal a few years back that generated tons of controversy. The ACLU has taken up the cause, but as of today, if you were to go downtown and say "I'm having a HELL of a bad day!" under your breath, you would likely be accosted by a guard. Don't even try to light up a cigarette or drink coffee downtown!
Over 95% of all government (local, city, county, state, plus senators and congressmen sent to DC) of Utah are Mormon. Good luck getting any kind of progressive or diversity-oriented discussion going on in Utah politics; all non-Mormons have no voice in Utah government.
At job interviews for private industry in Utah, you will be asked what (Mormon) ward you belong to, and whether you have gone on a Mormon (i.e. conversion) mission to another country yet. You will be asked if you smoke, drink, or have coffee. If you don't give the right answers, you won't get the job. You soon learn to judge immediately in your dealings whether the person you're talking to is Mormon or non-Mormon. If they're Mormon and you're non, you mentally give up and move on to the next task of the day because you realize that they've figured out you're a non and are ignoring whatever you say because it's coming from "someone with different [i.e. lesser] values."
In most of Utah, you cannot buy real beer, but must by "special" beer with limited alcohol content, and then only on weekdays, because it's illegal to sell on weekends. When Salt Lake mayor Rocky Anderson recently campaigned to relax some of the alcohol-related laws in Salt Lake City in anticipation of the Olympics, the radio waves and print industry were loaded down with Mormon-church-sponsored controversy about how "we should show the world just what moral living is" -- a kind of "we'll convert those nasty French drunks" mentality. They took out billboards and paid for commercials. People made public service announcements explaining how "there is no such thing as responsible drinking."
If you have children, they will have no friends in school because the Mormon parents will not let your children play with them, because "they don't have the same values we have." It doesn't matter if you are Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, Buddhist, or Hare-Krishna, you and your children are considered to be under Satan's influence if you are not Mormon. God help you if you and your children are (*gasp*) agnostics, atheists, or simply not religious. You children may even be graded down in school or sent to the principal's office for refusing to participate in religious activity during school hours.
The only local independent paper of repute (The Salt Lake Tribune) is in the grips of battle right now with the Mormon church, which already owns the other major media outlets (including the most popular television stations in the area and the other major newspaper) and have worked out a back-room leverage deal to own the Tribune also, though there are (thank god) lawsuits going on here as well to try to keep the Tribune independent. Outcries from local non-Mormons are growing more and more faint as the Mormon church tightents its grasp on all public forums (even at the street-level, as mentioned at the very beginning of this post).
Of course, The Church[TM] says that the 2002 olympics will *not* be the "Mormon Olympics" but everyong living in Salt Lake City knows otherwise, and the media exclusivity of the olympic games fits perfectly with the track record of Bonneville International, owned by the church, owner of most local (discussion+competition verboten) media outlets.
Proof indeed. I live here. I don't need proof.