They're just trying to smear him by associating him with Jane Fonda.
Oh, wait, only one of the pictures of them together was forged, while the other has been verified.
I think it's interesting that the media is following the forged photo and completely ignoring the fact that the man claiming now to be pro-military and bragging about his service record has been proven to be one of Hanoi Jane's fellow protesters. Granted, she was not yet personally, directly responsible for killing American servicemen, but I somehow doubt her claims that she suddenly had a radical change of heart between the time they were hanging out together and when she starting partying in North Vietnam.
I find this all very interesting, I hadn't even heard of these photos before now. But being anti-war is not bad, IMO. War *IS* bad. There may be a time and a place for war, but it sure as hell better be for an irrefutable reason. (not just for vindicating your daddy's bruised ego) And even though Kerry voted for the DMCA, I would still rather have him as the President over the clown we have in there now. As much as I hate to say it, I can live with the DMCA - I am not sure I can live with another 4 years of Bush.
(Likewise, disliking NASCAR is just fine, but implying everyone who likes it is dumb-as-nails is snotty)
Amen. But try telling that to the people who get pissed off when I wear my "NASCAR is stupid" T-shirt. After a couple of minutes of staring at it they figure out what it says, spit tobaccey on me, and tell their sister/wife to go git their shotgun out of the camper. Then they say "You think yur bettern me, just cause you have a shirt on." I try to explain that I just don't like NASCAR (when they tilt their head like a dog, I rephrase it as NAASCOR and it registers) and it doesn't reflect in any way on how I feel about him personally. Then they think I am some kind of faggot for having personal feelings towards him, and I have to quickly leave in my "furrin" car before the little lady gets back with the shotgun.
Then you have grocer savings cards, I do hear a bit of complaining about those, but nothing near say RFID. Those are personally identifiable as far as I can tell.
Except that they don't verify the identity when they are issued. So they know that "Jimmy P. Nonuts" purchased all the fixin's for a kick-ass chili, but they'll never be able to track it to me. (unless they track the entire purchase to my credit card, and can then figure out all the items I bought)
That kind of lock-in means any possible competition is always playing catch-up. Not to mention gives MS huge leverage (which they used) against other standards, such as Java (hence why Sun sued), or in the market for selling server software ("IE works best with our software.. and everybody uses IE, so you should really get ours.")
Let's not forget that this also opens them up to ENTER markets as well. Would MS have been able to enter the search engine market without having IE in place the way it is? No way. I am sure there are other markets they have ventured into based entirely on their ability to leverage their OS monopoly. Microsoft is not stupid - they know that competing businesses may come and go, but as long as they have that OS market share they can leverage it to their advantage in other areas. That is why Linux *IS* a real concern to them. After the OS, Office Applications are their bread and butter. But even if something else comes along to replace it, they can "work it out" in the OS to make it more difficult. But if they lose that OS marketshare - the game changes entirely. Conversely, their strengths in the application land keep people tied to their OS. It is the sweetest business out there.
But as software development and usage grows in places like China and India, will we see PPL (People's Public License) or IPL (Indian Public License) with terms or concepts different than GPL/BSD, etc?
By using this software you are agreeing that any violation of the licensing terms will result in your entire family being imprisoned.
Well, if you have some brains up there you'd be smart enough to buy the cheaper of the two equally performing processors. If the processor is a 'non-issue' you'd be stupid to go with the more expensive alternative.
My point was that when people say AMD is better, they mean it is cheaper. If Intel and AMD were the same price, which would you get? Me? I'd probably still get AMD, just because they are the underdog. And because they aren't part of the "evil" Wintel equation. And to tick off my buddy.:-)
Nobody knows if Intel is better, but they don't want a computer that "lacks" Intel inside. They simply guess that if it's inside, it's better than not having it inside.
It is brilliant. It can't be copied or AMD looks like a "me too!" player. It can't be contested because it's just vauge enough to not claim that the machine is any better for having Intel inside, but implies that anything else is somehow inferior.
Do you remember when the "Intel Inside" logo came out? There was no real competition. (it was the Pentium days) There were other processors, but the Pentium pretty much blew them away. Intel didn't just success on that logo alone, they do have a little bit of technology behind it.
I think it is funny when people say AMD is better. When they say that, ask them why - 99% of the time it will be because it is cheaper (bang for the buck). The other 1% might do overclocking, or read anandtech on a daily basis, or have some highly technical reason - which is essentially irrelevant to the argument. For AMD to be where they are in the processor market, it is nearly a miracle. The only reason is because Intel was comfortable in their position. AMD came on the scene with a comparable product at a cheaper price, and it woke Intel up real fast. They catered more to the "home enthusiast" market at just the right time.
I have a buddy who has worked at Intel for 7 years now, and I always kid him about AMD. He works on the thermal solutions, and has access to the fab floor. There may be some advantages that Intel has over AMD in some areas (and vice versa) but if you have two well put together systems of each sitting side-by-side, the processor is pretty much a non-issue.
Are "gamers" that insecure about their masculinity/sexuality/gaming prowess/dick size/pick something else that they're afraid of playing against girls?
Since there is no way to mod this "Duh", I had to respond.
OF COURSE! Have you ever played an online game? There are always those who are (or pretend to be) loud-mouthed, homophobic, racist, misogynist, immature dick-heads. They usually are the ones who cheat and play like tools. They either really are that ignorant, or they do it just to cause a stir and piss people off. Being female would only garner a different type of insult from these morons. They are what make online gaming so annoying. But it is so much fun and gratifying to own them.:-)
Now I know that not everyone is like this, but the ones who aren't don't care who they are playing against. Most of the time you don't know anyway, you just know people by their screen names and your past experiences with them. For all I know, some of them are women.
We should respect MS copyrights just as we expect MS to respect GPL. Sure MS may be dirty, but we are better than them.
I don't have their code, nor do I want it. But I realize that even if every single Linux user/GPL supporter refused to look at it or download it, it would still spread like wildfire. People download stuff like this just to say that they have it. I have a friend who is somewhat of a "collector" of things like this. He has no programming background whatsoever, he just wants to say that he has it. (ironically, he is actually in school getting a law degree with a concentration in Intellectual Property)
The shallow-minded slashdrones will say "Bush is evil, these scientists are 100% correct!" Instead, how about doing some research of your own in order to come to a conclusion? You'll probably find that the truth, as usual, lies somewhere in the middle.
What, you mean that "Bush is evil and the scientists are 50% correct"?
Yeah, instead of taking into account the information provided by an independent organization which includes 20 Nobel laureates, I'll just go to google and do a little reasearch myself...
(clickety-click)
Hmm, see, according to my extensive search query, they are totally wrong in their assessment.
Bumper sticker I saw yesterday: Which is worse, screwing an intern or screwing the country?
Bush is a lying megalomaniac with a family axe to grind, regardless of whether or not these scientists are right in their assessment. But if I had to make a surface judgement, I think I'll go with the overwhelming odds.
Well they know they're suing people behind IP addresses that were allegedly offering over 1,000 copyrighted songs on Kazaa.
They still don't know who those people are. They are suing "the owner of an IP address". That still doesn't identify the alledged copyright infringer, as is evidenced by the fact that they sued people who had never used file sharing software. It was someone else on their computer. So now is there going to be a law for "accessory to copyright infringement"?
Everyone else has already pointed out how stupid this concept is, but imagine how it will impact the police, firemen, rescue workers, etc.
Now it accounts for their professional vehicles by stating:
"motor vehicle" means a passenger motor vehicle, including an automobile, pickup truck or van normally used for personal, family or household purposes, that is sold and registered in this state and whose gross vehicle weight is less than ten thousand pounds.
But what about on their personal vehicles? Volunteer firemen use their personal vehicles to get to the station. Cops are pretty much always on duty, and may need to get somewhere in a hurry in their personal vehicle. Rescue personel, doctors, etc. What about on motorcycles? Are they going to let people drive them drunk? Can you imagine trying to do a rolling test on a bike?
I think this is just a F'n stupid bill that will get shot down. If it would actually pass, you'll see so many lawsuits it will make your head spin.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's pretty likely that the p2p users the RIAA chose to sue were actually violating the law. You can't possibly think that suing less than a fraction of a percent of p2p abusing copyright violators somehow makes more people look guilty than actually are?
The problem is, they don't know who they are suing. That is the reason they sued kids and elderly people, some who had no clue why they were being sued.
Now if the RIAA was suing everyone, I would expect that there be some "collateral damage", but they are supposedly carefully crafting their lawsuits, and are still F'ing it up. Usually, you know who you are suing and why. The RIAA doesn't, and in my book, that makes them a bunch of greedy stupid clueless pricks.
Heh. It seems to be linked to right below your username;)
Awwwww...... shit. All it takes is one person to download it to throttle the crap out of my DSL line. Maybe some generous soul will see the smoking remains of my webserver and offer up some mirror space.:-)
With interest rates as low as they are right now, shouldn't they be borrowing and investing more in the future, or some such economic technobabble like that? Cash in the bank can't be giving them as much growth as investment would...
Well, what are you referring to? Is it good that they are out of debt? Yes. Is having no debt necessarily good for a company? No. Can Apple now borrow a ton of money and go back into debt? Yes.
What we didn't see was the second memo that went around saying "So now we can borrow our asses off!":-)
All this is saying is that they are out of debt. If they are like most people, the second they get out of debt, they usually go right back into it somehow. Maybe they paid off their higher interest debt, and will be able to get a big chunk of R&D money at lower rates. Hell, maybe this was just a PR thing to get them in the news. Seems to have worked...
I highly recommend his book "Greetings, Carbon Based Bipeds", which is a collection of his various writings. Very entertaining reading, especially when you consider the timeframe when some of them were written. (1934-1998) You can pick it up for next to nothing .
This issue really demonstrates how serious the OSS community is about licensing. Distributors have read it. They understand what all the terms mean, and they are willing to abide by the licensing terms. In this case, they don't agree to the terms, and won't use that version of the product.
I understand the intent behind the new license, but it isn't practical for the distros. They made their case, and if the license isn't changed then they won't use the product. Isn't that how licensing should work? That is better than the distros saying "Sorry, we can't abide by these terms, but we are going to use your software anyway." At first I thought there might be bullying here by the distros, but XFree made the licensing change, the distros are the ones who have to choose whether to abide by it or not. Seems like the little guy has the power here.
Over half of these 100 "Distros" are Knoppix remasters. Here's a list of 60+ Knoppix remasters. The reason there are so many? It's very easy to make your own Knoppix remaster. I'm pretty sure many of these distros have 5 users if the're lucky.
I don't know. I created a version, have it on my home server (which is why I am not linking it here) and I have people downloading it all the time. I would link to my mirror, but it disappeared a while ago. (anyone have 200 MB of space and a big pipe?) It is a bootable Quake MegaTF server. Not Q3, the old-school version. It is text only, because it just has the server on it. I have been meaning to include a light-gui, and the clients as well, but haven't gotten around to it. But I know more than 5 people have downloaded my ISO, and I am not even on any of these lists. But I have been in contact with people who have used it, and have had LAN parties with it.
OK, time for a quick nostalgia trip. My friend and I were at a supermarket and they had bubble bobble. I asked if he wanted to play, but he said "that game is lame/retarded/gay". He had never actually played it, so I offered to pay for his first game. Well, 2 hours and 5$ later he didn't think it was so lame. Man I miss that game.
Bubble Bobble was the game that got me into arcade collecting. It was my holy grail. Did you know that it came out as a kit? Most of the machines you will ever see will just be conversions of other machines. I don't know if there are any "original" machines out there. I started my collecting by getting a Bad Dudes from an auction (real one, not online) for $25. Then I finally found a Bubble Bobble boardset after about 2 years of searching and waiting, and reading rec.games.video.arcade.collecting. Then I was off to solder up the harness so I could play it out of my Bad Dudes cabinet. I still remember the first time it powered up.
I used to play it at the local bowling alley in high school. We had a bowling class, so they would bus us down to the alley every day for an hour. I'd get to play it every day, it was awesome. Then 10 years later, I had one of my own. A Chinese friend of mine knew all about the game, and he came over one night and we powered through all the levels - then we did it again! Did you know that when you finish all 100 levels the second time, there is a different ending?
That game is so phenominal. There are cheat codes, secret levels, bonuses, easter eggs, etc. And this was created bach in 1986.
I was also able to get boardsets for Rainbow Islands, which was harder to get than Bubble Bobble. I don't like the game as much, but I got it more as a collector. I also have a similar game called New Zealand Story. I still have those boardsets too, I am not getting rid of them.
Now, I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but I really don't see what the big deal is with Windows Media Player. Like somebody pointed out (Monkeyboy Ballmer IIRC), Windows has shipped with a Media Player since Windows 3.1 at least, and nobody's complained about illegal bundling.
In Windows 3.1, there was no Windows Media format, and there certainly was no DRM. The player isn't the problem, it is Microsoft's ability to leverage their marketshare to push out open multimedia formats in favor of their own.
Now you can argue that there will always be alternatives, but the company with the huge advantage in the Operating System marketshare should not be able to use that monopoly power to kill competition in other areas such as multimedia. Remember, it isn't illegal to be a monopoly, it is illegal to abuse that monopoly power. Which Microsoft has done, and continues to do.
The door has swung the other direction. As a child, I wasn't the richest kid in town, and I didn't play arcade games much. It was a quarter a pop, and if you aren't much good (which you can't be without experience) your quarter doesn't last long.
I remember quite vividly getting my first nintendo, and how amazing it seemed that I could play Duck Hunt for half an hour with no line, and no quarters.
Why go back?
If you have to ask, you just don't get it.
Seriously. I was born in '69, so I was there when all of the classic games came out. Maybe I am just being nostalgic, but it was an awesome time. Take your $5 that you saved and go to the arcade. You could play 20 games, if you didn't buy any chips or Coke. You could watch other people play. I remember when Pac Man came out. I bought the damn "Pac Man Fever" 45. I remember playing Moon Patrol and Joust at the Pizza Hut. I always went for the 5x in Lunar Lander instead of playing it safe with the 2x. Sinistar still scares the crap out of me. I spent many many hours playing Star Wars. Games like Gauntlet let you play alongside other people. I could go on and on. Check out Video Arcade Preservation Society (VAPS) or the Killer List of Video games (KLOV) if you want to go back in time a little. And there is always MAME for a more hands-on approach.
It isn't like home systems weren't fun, I broke countless Atari 2600 joysticks. But you just can't compare the classic arcade scene to home gaming or arcades of today. It just doesn't work.
I'm sure that having a second monitor to provide extra game info is probably way cool, especially with games like flight sims and driving sims. But how many people really have two monitors?
Exactly. That is the whole reason I bought a KVM switch, to AVOID needing more than one monitor. If I get tired of "hotkeying" over to the other computers, I can fire up VNC.
Gaming is a money pit. I *almost* bought a new video card back in November just to be prepared for when HL2 came out. I am soooo glad I couldn't quite afford it. I am running an ATI-AIW32Pro, and it lags behind on several games. And I don't play very many at all. Luckily, it does find on good ol' Quake MegaTF.:-)
According to DistroWatch.com, ranked by hits per day on their website: Mandrake 991 Red Hat 696 Knoppix 643 Debian 567 Fedora 518 Gentoo 477 SUSE 460 Slackware 423
Well, maybe that would be an indicator of the shrinking distros. Why else would they be visiting distrowatch? I don't go there unless I am considering switching.
And THAT many people use Knoppix on a daily basis? Wow. I wonder if those are running off of CD, or are "installed" versions of Knoppix. Too bad the version info couldn't be tweaked once it is installed to show the difference (just for kicks).
Slashdot Mirror
I find this all very interesting, I hadn't even heard of these photos before now. But being anti-war is not bad, IMO. War *IS* bad. There may be a time and a place for war, but it sure as hell better be for an irrefutable reason. (not just for vindicating your daddy's bruised ego) And even though Kerry voted for the DMCA, I would still rather have him as the President over the clown we have in there now. As much as I hate to say it, I can live with the DMCA - I am not sure I can live with another 4 years of Bush.
Amen. But try telling that to the people who get pissed off when I wear my "NASCAR is stupid" T-shirt. After a couple of minutes of staring at it they figure out what it says, spit tobaccey on me, and tell their sister/wife to go git their shotgun out of the camper. Then they say "You think yur bettern me, just cause you have a shirt on." I try to explain that I just don't like NASCAR (when they tilt their head like a dog, I rephrase it as NAASCOR and it registers) and it doesn't reflect in any way on how I feel about him personally. Then they think I am some kind of faggot for having personal feelings towards him, and I have to quickly leave in my "furrin" car before the little lady gets back with the shotgun.
Except that they don't verify the identity when they are issued. So they know that "Jimmy P. Nonuts" purchased all the fixin's for a kick-ass chili, but they'll never be able to track it to me. (unless they track the entire purchase to my credit card, and can then figure out all the items I bought)
Let's not forget that this also opens them up to ENTER markets as well. Would MS have been able to enter the search engine market without having IE in place the way it is? No way. I am sure there are other markets they have ventured into based entirely on their ability to leverage their OS monopoly. Microsoft is not stupid - they know that competing businesses may come and go, but as long as they have that OS market share they can leverage it to their advantage in other areas. That is why Linux *IS* a real concern to them. After the OS, Office Applications are their bread and butter. But even if something else comes along to replace it, they can "work it out" in the OS to make it more difficult. But if they lose that OS marketshare - the game changes entirely. Conversely, their strengths in the application land keep people tied to their OS. It is the sweetest business out there.
By using this software you are agreeing that any violation of the licensing terms will result in your entire family being imprisoned.
Sory, bad joke, couldn't resist.
My point was that when people say AMD is better, they mean it is cheaper. If Intel and AMD were the same price, which would you get? Me? I'd probably still get AMD, just because they are the underdog. And because they aren't part of the "evil" Wintel equation. And to tick off my buddy. :-)
Do you remember when the "Intel Inside" logo came out? There was no real competition. (it was the Pentium days) There were other processors, but the Pentium pretty much blew them away. Intel didn't just success on that logo alone, they do have a little bit of technology behind it.
I think it is funny when people say AMD is better. When they say that, ask them why - 99% of the time it will be because it is cheaper (bang for the buck). The other 1% might do overclocking, or read anandtech on a daily basis, or have some highly technical reason - which is essentially irrelevant to the argument. For AMD to be where they are in the processor market, it is nearly a miracle. The only reason is because Intel was comfortable in their position. AMD came on the scene with a comparable product at a cheaper price, and it woke Intel up real fast. They catered more to the "home enthusiast" market at just the right time.
I have a buddy who has worked at Intel for 7 years now, and I always kid him about AMD. He works on the thermal solutions, and has access to the fab floor. There may be some advantages that Intel has over AMD in some areas (and vice versa) but if you have two well put together systems of each sitting side-by-side, the processor is pretty much a non-issue.
Since there is no way to mod this "Duh", I had to respond.
OF COURSE! Have you ever played an online game? There are always those who are (or pretend to be) loud-mouthed, homophobic, racist, misogynist, immature dick-heads. They usually are the ones who cheat and play like tools. They either really are that ignorant, or they do it just to cause a stir and piss people off. Being female would only garner a different type of insult from these morons. They are what make online gaming so annoying. But it is so much fun and gratifying to own them. :-)
Now I know that not everyone is like this, but the ones who aren't don't care who they are playing against. Most of the time you don't know anyway, you just know people by their screen names and your past experiences with them. For all I know, some of them are women.
I don't have their code, nor do I want it. But I realize that even if every single Linux user/GPL supporter refused to look at it or download it, it would still spread like wildfire. People download stuff like this just to say that they have it. I have a friend who is somewhat of a "collector" of things like this. He has no programming background whatsoever, he just wants to say that he has it. (ironically, he is actually in school getting a law degree with a concentration in Intellectual Property)
The cat-genie is out of the bag-bottle.
What, you mean that "Bush is evil and the scientists are 50% correct"?
Yeah, instead of taking into account the information provided by an independent organization which includes 20 Nobel laureates, I'll just go to google and do a little reasearch myself...
(clickety-click)
Hmm, see, according to my extensive search query, they are totally wrong in their assessment.
Bumper sticker I saw yesterday: Which is worse, screwing an intern or screwing the country?
Bush is a lying megalomaniac with a family axe to grind, regardless of whether or not these scientists are right in their assessment. But if I had to make a surface judgement, I think I'll go with the overwhelming odds.
They still don't know who those people are. They are suing "the owner of an IP address". That still doesn't identify the alledged copyright infringer, as is evidenced by the fact that they sued people who had never used file sharing software. It was someone else on their computer. So now is there going to be a law for "accessory to copyright infringement"?
But what about on their personal vehicles? Volunteer firemen use their personal vehicles to get to the station. Cops are pretty much always on duty, and may need to get somewhere in a hurry in their personal vehicle. Rescue personel, doctors, etc. What about on motorcycles? Are they going to let people drive them drunk? Can you imagine trying to do a rolling test on a bike?
I think this is just a F'n stupid bill that will get shot down. If it would actually pass, you'll see so many lawsuits it will make your head spin.
The problem is, they don't know who they are suing. That is the reason they sued kids and elderly people, some who had no clue why they were being sued.
Now if the RIAA was suing everyone, I would expect that there be some "collateral damage", but they are supposedly carefully crafting their lawsuits, and are still F'ing it up. Usually, you know who you are suing and why. The RIAA doesn't, and in my book, that makes them a bunch of greedy stupid clueless pricks.
Awwwww...... shit. All it takes is one person to download it to throttle the crap out of my DSL line. Maybe some generous soul will see the smoking remains of my webserver and offer up some mirror space. :-)
Well, what are you referring to? Is it good that they are out of debt? Yes. Is having no debt necessarily good for a company? No. Can Apple now borrow a ton of money and go back into debt? Yes.
What we didn't see was the second memo that went around saying "So now we can borrow our asses off!" :-)
All this is saying is that they are out of debt. If they are like most people, the second they get out of debt, they usually go right back into it somehow. Maybe they paid off their higher interest debt, and will be able to get a big chunk of R&D money at lower rates. Hell, maybe this was just a PR thing to get them in the news. Seems to have worked...
I highly recommend his book "Greetings, Carbon Based Bipeds", which is a collection of his various writings. Very entertaining reading, especially when you consider the timeframe when some of them were written. (1934-1998) You can pick it up for next to nothing .
I understand the intent behind the new license, but it isn't practical for the distros. They made their case, and if the license isn't changed then they won't use the product. Isn't that how licensing should work? That is better than the distros saying "Sorry, we can't abide by these terms, but we are going to use your software anyway." At first I thought there might be bullying here by the distros, but XFree made the licensing change, the distros are the ones who have to choose whether to abide by it or not. Seems like the little guy has the power here.
I don't know. I created a version, have it on my home server (which is why I am not linking it here) and I have people downloading it all the time. I would link to my mirror, but it disappeared a while ago. (anyone have 200 MB of space and a big pipe?) It is a bootable Quake MegaTF server. Not Q3, the old-school version. It is text only, because it just has the server on it. I have been meaning to include a light-gui, and the clients as well, but haven't gotten around to it. But I know more than 5 people have downloaded my ISO, and I am not even on any of these lists. But I have been in contact with people who have used it, and have had LAN parties with it.
Bubble Bobble was the game that got me into arcade collecting. It was my holy grail. Did you know that it came out as a kit? Most of the machines you will ever see will just be conversions of other machines. I don't know if there are any "original" machines out there. I started my collecting by getting a Bad Dudes from an auction (real one, not online) for $25. Then I finally found a Bubble Bobble boardset after about 2 years of searching and waiting, and reading rec.games.video.arcade.collecting. Then I was off to solder up the harness so I could play it out of my Bad Dudes cabinet. I still remember the first time it powered up.
I used to play it at the local bowling alley in high school. We had a bowling class, so they would bus us down to the alley every day for an hour. I'd get to play it every day, it was awesome. Then 10 years later, I had one of my own. A Chinese friend of mine knew all about the game, and he came over one night and we powered through all the levels - then we did it again! Did you know that when you finish all 100 levels the second time, there is a different ending?
That game is so phenominal. There are cheat codes, secret levels, bonuses, easter eggs, etc. And this was created bach in 1986.
I was also able to get boardsets for Rainbow Islands, which was harder to get than Bubble Bobble. I don't like the game as much, but I got it more as a collector. I also have a similar game called New Zealand Story. I still have those boardsets too, I am not getting rid of them.
Technically, it should be "-'--!"
In Windows 3.1, there was no Windows Media format, and there certainly was no DRM. The player isn't the problem, it is Microsoft's ability to leverage their marketshare to push out open multimedia formats in favor of their own.
Now you can argue that there will always be alternatives, but the company with the huge advantage in the Operating System marketshare should not be able to use that monopoly power to kill competition in other areas such as multimedia. Remember, it isn't illegal to be a monopoly, it is illegal to abuse that monopoly power. Which Microsoft has done, and continues to do.
If you have to ask, you just don't get it.
Seriously. I was born in '69, so I was there when all of the classic games came out. Maybe I am just being nostalgic, but it was an awesome time. Take your $5 that you saved and go to the arcade. You could play 20 games, if you didn't buy any chips or Coke. You could watch other people play. I remember when Pac Man came out. I bought the damn "Pac Man Fever" 45. I remember playing Moon Patrol and Joust at the Pizza Hut. I always went for the 5x in Lunar Lander instead of playing it safe with the 2x. Sinistar still scares the crap out of me. I spent many many hours playing Star Wars. Games like Gauntlet let you play alongside other people. I could go on and on. Check out Video Arcade Preservation Society (VAPS) or the Killer List of Video games (KLOV) if you want to go back in time a little. And there is always MAME for a more hands-on approach.
It isn't like home systems weren't fun, I broke countless Atari 2600 joysticks. But you just can't compare the classic arcade scene to home gaming or arcades of today. It just doesn't work.
Exactly. That is the whole reason I bought a KVM switch, to AVOID needing more than one monitor. If I get tired of "hotkeying" over to the other computers, I can fire up VNC.
Gaming is a money pit. I *almost* bought a new video card back in November just to be prepared for when HL2 came out. I am soooo glad I couldn't quite afford it. I am running an ATI-AIW32Pro, and it lags behind on several games. And I don't play very many at all. Luckily, it does find on good ol' Quake MegaTF. :-)
According to DistroWatch.com, ranked by hits per day on their website:
Mandrake 991
Red Hat 696
Knoppix 643
Debian 567
Fedora 518
Gentoo 477
SUSE 460
Slackware 423
Well, maybe that would be an indicator of the shrinking distros. Why else would they be visiting distrowatch? I don't go there unless I am considering switching.
And THAT many people use Knoppix on a daily basis? Wow. I wonder if those are running off of CD, or are "installed" versions of Knoppix. Too bad the version info couldn't be tweaked once it is installed to show the difference (just for kicks).
If you have a BSD-licensed product, you shouldn't feel a need to build your own if you find appropriate BSD-licensed components.
...
:-)
If you have a GPL-licensed product, you shouldn't feel a need to build your own if you find appropriate GPL-licensed components.
If you're making something proprietary, well, I guess yeah, build your own.
Or
If you're making something proprietary, use a BSD licensed or GPL component, just don't get caught.