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  1. Re:This is what I get after installing in Debian x on Valve Officially Launches Steam For Linux · · Score: 1

    A comment well deserving of the Anonymous Coward moniker.

  2. Re:This is what I get after installing in Debian x on Valve Officially Launches Steam For Linux · · Score: 2

    As mentioned by someone else, this is because Debian doesn't have libc6 ver 2.15. You have to download the ubuntu libc6 libraries, and extract them to your ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/ directory.

    There are debian testing install scripts for Steam which will automatically do this for you. Go forth and search for them.

    Also, don't install the ia32-libs package. Enable multiarch support in Debian: dpkg --add-architecture i386
    You can now install individual i386 library packages, instead of having one large package.

  3. Re:Rules? on Can You Do the Regular Expression Crossword? · · Score: 1

    That makes more sense. You're right, I was trying to match the regular expression to the line, instead of the line as a result of the regular expression. Still, it would have been nice to remove the ambiguity and wrap each clue with ^ and $. No matter how redundant or silly it seems to Anonymous Cowards.

  4. Re:Rules? on Can You Do the Regular Expression Crossword? · · Score: 0

    If they wanted to fully describe a line, they'd wrap each expression in start-of-line (^) and end-of-line ($) metacharacters.

    What gets me though, are clues like "(O|RHH|MM)*" . That's basically saying: there's an O or an RHH or an MM ... and _zero_ or more combinations of these. Functionally equivalent to a ".*". Essentially a useless clue. The crossword is littered with these types.

  5. Re:When the Billionaire makes a move... on Eric Schmidt To Sell Up To 42% of Stake In Google · · Score: 1

    That is, of course, unless the charity is the US Govt. I hear they need some money to pay off a few debts. Eric may be doing it this way to give them a helping hand.

  6. Re:Two things. on Data Analyst Spoils the World's Biggest Song Vote · · Score: 1

    The OP makes a good point? I'm not so sure of that.

    In the last month, there have been 11 stories tagged with the "Australia" label. Second from the top, the stories have been about: the Pirate Party being registered, monitoring body temperature of firefighters, potential cure for aids discovered, major telescope threatened by bushfire, spy agency seeking permission to hack third-party computers, R18+ classification for video games, insulin's structure being cracked, orbital pictures of bushfires, drones used for bushfire forecasting, and the world's oldest fossils found. Most, if not all, are quite valid news for nerds stories.

    There have been 30 stories specifically tagged as "usa", in that same time period. Granted, some stories are a little bizarrely tagged as "usa". Not sure why a story about unemployed chinese graduates is labelled such. Regardless, it's easy to see that Slashdot has a much larger USA bias.

    And you know what, that's fine. It's good to read about things happening in the USA, just as much as it is for Americans to read about what's happening in the rest of the world. Including Australia. Stop acting insular. Enjoy learning anything and everything about the world around you. This is what, to me, truly defines being a nerd.

  7. Re:Two things. on Data Analyst Spoils the World's Biggest Song Vote · · Score: 3, Informative

    1. Your cynicism is getting the better of you. This is a valid news for nerds story, about how data analysis successfully predicted the majority of a list meant to be kept secret. The story would have been interesting, had it come from any part of the world.

    2. The Triple J station is known for playing many alternative and unknown artists. It's a government funded station, but editorially independent from government by law. Your list of known songs/singers/artists are likely influenced by your regional tastes, and also commercial interests of the stations you listen to. These would not match up with an alternative music station.

    2a. Have a listen to Thrift Shop, the song that made #1. I'm not generally one for hip-hop, but I liked it. Great lyrics, has some good things to say about fashion labels and stylistic expectations. Interestingly enough, the song is independent of commercial labels, and has had great success in US/Canada/Australia/New Zealand.

  8. How does a geek lose weight? on Standard Kilogram Gains Weight · · Score: 4, Funny

    He (or she) redefines the standard.

    Now all we need are electronic scales that can receive updated firmware via the internet.

  9. Re:With respect... on Why JavaScript Is the New Perl · · Score: 1

    I use and know both JavaScript and Perl. I am in full agreement with you.

  10. Re:Gee haven't heard that before... on Blizzard Reportedly Planning A Linux Game For 2013 · · Score: 3, Informative

    They don't even need to target a distribution. Statically link the binaries, release them as a tar.gz, under the provisio that they are not officially supported, but issues can be reported in some forum. Let the distributions do the work of packaging it. The world (of warcraft) is your oyster, or whatever other mollusc takes your fancy.

  11. Re:Favorite comics. on Ask Slashdot: What Was Your Favorite Web Comic of 2012? · · Score: 1

    Been a long time fan of Sluggy Freelance. Even bought the megatome hardcovers (and waiting patiently for the next one). I sometimes wonder how easy it would be for a new reader to get into it, as there's a large amount of back story. Definitely worth the effort though. Quality web comic!

  12. Re:Disappointing on After 12 years of Development, E17 Is Out · · Score: 1

    E17 is aimed at the kind of person who likes to configure and tweak their system. I don't think it's trying to progress The Linux Desktop for the masses. It's just trying to do its own thing, and explore its own style of window management/desktop environment.

    These things are always subjective, so it's understandable if you don't like E17. I can assure you though, it does fill the needs for a segment of Linux users out there, and they think it's an excellent step forward for their personal Linux Desktop.

  13. Re:12 years to achieve..... on After 12 years of Development, E17 Is Out · · Score: 5, Informative

    E17 conforms well enough to the freedesktop.org standards. Even though it's not really a standards body, freedesktop.org is readily used by modern window managers, and is becoming a defacto standard. E17 does still store its config in the $HOME/.e directory though, instead of $HOME/.config/e . Can't wait until all unix utils use the .config directory, clearing out the dotfile clutter in the home dir.

    Games run perfectly well under E17. I have dozens of games, bought via Humble Bundle, and every one I've tried has worked fine with E17 (barring game bugs, of course). I had a problem once, with keyboard only games not getting focus when they run fullscreen. It's working fine now.

    I use E17 on my work computer. Have done so for years. Any instability in my working environment has generally come from me, not the window manager. I think it's only ever crashed once in that time, and even then, I could press F1 to recover (as instructed by the crash dialog), and the window manager restarted itself with all windows intact.

    The parent post was trolling. Probably best not to feed the troll.

  14. Re:ESD? on After 12 years of Development, E17 Is Out · · Score: 3, Informative

    Nope. Hasn't needed ESD for years. It works perfectly fine with ALSA or Pulseaudio.

  15. Re:64 bit? on Steam For Linux Is Now an Open Beta · · Score: 1

    Meh. It's not an issue. The package was designed for Ubuntu, not Debian.

    When Valve release a Debian version of their client, installing it will be a matter of click on link and select the install option.

  16. Speaker cables on Researchers Create Ultrastretchable Wires Using Liquid Metal · · Score: 1

    Sounds like a great idea for speaker cables. You can stretch the cable to whatever distance you need!

    Is it oxygen-free? I hate how oxygen ruins the timbre of my cables. ;-)

  17. Re:64 bit? on Steam For Linux Is Now an Open Beta · · Score: 1

    Oh, I forgot to mention, another annoyance with installing Steam under Debian, is that it requires libc6 >= 2.15 . Debian testing and unstable only have 2.13. Experimental has libc6 2.16 though, so you can either install that, or download the ubuntu libc6 and copy the lib files to where steam keeps its library binaries. I ended up doing the latter.

  18. Re:64 bit? on Steam For Linux Is Now an Open Beta · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm running Steam on a 64-bit Debian system. I had to enable multi-architecture for i386, and manually install the 32 bit version of the glx libraries for the driver I'm using. Other 32 bit drivers needed were automatically installed with a simple "dpkg -i steam.deb" / "apt-get -f install" combo. Also, specifically for debian, I had to modify the steam package and rename a few dependencies by hand.

    All good and running TF2 beta beautifully. Also, Cogs was another game that worked. Many other games on the "Linux" list aren't installable just yet. I believe that Valve have to properly link them in their system first.

  19. Re:Who cares? on Call for Questions: Rasterman, Founder of the Enlightenment Project · · Score: 1

    The good news is that E17 is not only pretty, it is very configurable. Which means, it can be very usable, or extremely tough, to use. It all depends on how its configured. Every keystroke, every mouse click (and mouse/key combos), even the behaviour when you move the mouse to the edge of the screen, it can all be tweaked to behave in a large variety of ways. I maintain that E17 is one of the nicest WM systems to use, especially if you prefer to use the keyboard for most actions. That makes it better for getting work done.

  20. Re:What driver revolution? on AMD Radeon Performance Preview On Linux 3.8 · · Score: 1

    Apparently it will be possible to achieve network transparency with Wayland, through a program external to the core of the system.

    I disagree that X is showing its age badly. I think it is showing its age gracefully. Through its extensible design, it has been able to step up and cope with the demands of the modern desktop. Wayland will be more efficient, of that there is no doubt. I wonder if Wayland will cope with future demands anywhere near as well as what X has.

  21. Re:Got Beta invite ... for Debian on Valve Begins Listing Linux Requirements For Certain Games On Steam · · Score: 1

    Yep, I received my invite 4 or 5 days ago, when I mentioned I was running Debian testing/Wheezy.

    Just a note about the steam deb package. It contains dependencies that Debian doesn't have, like libc6 2.15, and libjpeg-turbo8, or something like that. You'll have to open up the deb file, and alter the control file to change the dependencies. You'll also have to download a copy of the ubuntu libc6, and throw it into the user steam directory where it stores its dynamic loadable files. Also, steam is a 32 bit package. If you're running 64 bit, you'll have to enable multiarch support by adding the i386 architecture to the dpkg system. You can then do a dpkg -i / apt-get -f install combo to install the (modified) steam deb and all dependent i386 files. Oh, and if you're running proprietary drivers, make sure to install the i386 version of the glx drivers.

    So, in summary, it takes a bit of fiddling, but I'm running steam fine on Debian. Works quite nicely, in fact. TF2 is very smooth.

  22. Re:Low average payment so far on New Humble Bundle Is Windows Only, DRM Games · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, the Windows group has always been the lowest average in Humble Bundles. The Linux group, and to a lesser extent, the Mac group, have always pushed the bundle average up. So, the results aren't much of a surprise.

    I can't imagine the effort of porting all those games to other platforms. Give 'em a year, and it could probably be done. I'm sure THQ couldn't wait that long, though.

  23. Re:I'm one of the people who's pretty angry... on New Humble Bundle Is Windows Only, DRM Games · · Score: 2

    Your anger is somewhat justifiable. This sets a precedent. Now, other game publishers, who may want to use Humble Bundle, will not feel the need to put in an effort to make their games cross-platform.

    Having said that, I'm grateful to Humble Bundle for pushing their cross-platform philosophy as much as they did. It's efforts like that which provide the initial step in generating a flood of games supporting Linux. I'll keep on supporting them, in future bundles, when they once more release cross platform bundles. I genuinely believe they've pushed Linux gaming to the next level, and have greatly influenced developers on the potential of Linux gaming. This will bear fruit soon.

  24. Re:TLDR version on Anthropologist Spends Three Years Living With Hackers · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to the general comments with the article, the book has a creative commons license. The author commented that she will release a copy soon, when she fixes the website to go with it.

  25. Re:Better get used to it, THQ on THQ Clarifies Claims of "Horrible, Slow" Wii U CPU · · Score: 1

    Over the years I've been running Linux, the only time I've ever had driver availability issues with Linux has been with one brand new wireless card. It now works fine. Otherwise, driver availability has been perfect in my experience.

      An anecdote: one time, one of the FreeBSD guys here at work gave up in frustration trying to get FreeBSD working on an IBM server. He was having scsi card driver issues. He had to install Linux instead. It just worked under Linux.

      Usually when people talk about shitty driver support in Linux, they're referring to graphics drivers. I wish they'd just say "graphics drivers", instead of implying that the whole Linux driver system is abysmal. Linux drivers are top notch. The graphics drivers are not even part of the kernel. They're part of the Xwindows system. They're still excellent, except when it comes to 3D acceleration and power saving, and then, only with ATI and Nvidia. The proprietary drivers still have the edge there.