He seems pretty confident that the draft is going to be reinstated no matter what. While I wont vote for bush he did say flat out that there wont be a draft as long as he is president. And despite him being incredibly stupid, he hasn't made any flat out blatant open lies. All of his lies are slippery with qualifications and such. And the people that write what he says are very careful. Also, it would take congress to have a draft and they voted almost unanimously against it just a short time ago. Obviously they could bring it up again and vote yes, but I can't imagine every person in congress changing their minds without a new catastrophic event.
I really hope that there is no new catastrophic event.
I, a friend of Schezar, hereby threaten to take the life of the president of the united states. I make this threat for the sole purpose of getting the secret service to come to my door. I think it would be great fun to talk to them, possibly go to court and learn some secrets. I think it would be especially awesome if they use any provisions of the Patriot act in their visit. That way when I go to court I can be the guy who challenges their constitutionality. Also, it would be great fun and bring an element of excitement into my life. Not only that, but it will give me a great story to tell everyone on the net and everyone I know/meet about how the secret service investigated me because they are so incredibly stupid they cannot differentiate a serious threat from a joking one.
When will this nonsense end? Remember the days where it didn't matter so much who was president? I mean sure, you liked one guy better than the other, but if you lost it wasn't the end of the world. I long for those days. When politics existed, but in general everything just worked. But now through combination of media and other factors everything is about ten times worse. I just want to go back to the days when I don't have to worry about government so much. I'm a computer programmer, I want to spend my time thinking about software and gizmos and things without worrying about people dying, lying, cheating, stealing and taking away civil liberties. So let's do our best to get back to those days.
Oh, and anyone who wants to make a joke about those days not ever existing, I present to you the 90's when the internet and technology was more important that politics. And that's just example 1.
conscience would get the best of you eh? Obviously he's never heard of people without consciences. He's also never heard of people like me who have consciences but can act against them at will providing I can prove to myself that what I'm doing is correct despite feeling it is wrong.
wow. um, you started out ok, but what's with the intelligence insulting? I do realize that Nintendo doesn't own the rights to many of the NES games, and that would prevent them from releasing many of them. However, a slashdot post is not a bill in congress. I don't need to to specify every detail of every little thing. It's just casual conversation.
Consider yourself equally foe'd. I'd love to have a childish insult war with you, because you seem to like that sort of thing, but your slasdhot username says it all.
I can understand why a product like this is released in China. But why not also release it here? I mean, the only official X games in one stuff we get is Atari stuff. If we want legal NES games we have to go pay $20 for one game for the GBA. Yet china gets multiple N64 games in a single cheap unit? There are bootleg controllers you can buy with every NES ROM ever in a single unit. Nintendo, make an NES controller with every important NES game ever init. Then do the same thing for SNES. People will buy it. Hey, then you can put it online and people can pay 50 cents per rom. If you want to stop piracy/emulation you have to sell it.
Here is why a constitutional convention is scary. Right now we need ratification by 3/4 of the states. But the way that works is each individual state legislature spends a lot of time discussing it and such. At a constitutional convention a few representatives from each state discuss amongst themselves and can make amendments easily and quickly.
Second. Congress determines time and place of the convention. It is unknown if congress can set the terms for it as well. The supreme court would have to decide. If congress CAN set the terms, then it is safe because they can say something like "only issues relating to gay marriage can be discussed at this convention". If congress cannot set the terms then who knows. It does not necessarily mean that the constitution will be scrapped. But it does mean that whoever is at this convention will be in the drivers seat of the United States and collectively will be able to point it any way they choose.
And keep in mind, these people will be currently elected officials from gerrymandered districts in a two party system. The original constitutional convention was one of the very rare and few times in history when there was both political power and wisdom in the same room at the same time. Another convention would be a disaster. All the political power in the world with almost nil wisdom. And imagine the media there. If there is a constitutional convention I will probably do everything within my power to influence it for good and not for bad. And if it turns out poorly I'll have to run away.
While a convention brings great possibility for good. It is a very very scary thing you do not want. Granted, while it was going on it would be cool, historic, entertaining, exciting, etc. But the results would almost certaintly be unpleasant.
I agree mostly with this. However, I think an even better option is if every state did a split up of its electora votes in the way that Main does and Colorado is considering.
On a side note, it is very good that congress realizes this is an issue and is amending it in the usual way. We are only two states away from a constitutional convention, and that is a dangerous and scary thing for many reasons.
I don't know if attorney general is an elected position, but that doesn't matter. We need to send the message to people in our government that the more they do stuff like this the more likely they are to get our vote. The two presidential candidates have not even said a word about taking out evil corporations. And the third party candidates might say something about it, but have no track record of actually doing so. I want the people who represent me to know that if they do things that hurt record companies, the MPAA, media companies, etc. That I will proudly vote for them regardless of political affiliation.
I had this idea a while ago. That I should make a software company that has no office building. It would consists of a cabana, lots of really comfortable beach chairs, a big safe to store important stuffs in, and a wire box with network/server and a WAP. All the employees would lounge about by the pool, or in the pool with waterproof laptops, doing work and connecting via wireless.
I mean seriously, what beats coding on the beach? And customers would love to do business with us even if we charged more than the competition. I think its a winner. Every day will be Hawaiian shirt day.
OMG! THAT'S what the meta modes are! I set them up and they work perfectly. The panning mode is especially awesome. Now everything works great!
The best thing about twinview though is still having opengl span both screens. I wish someone would program something to take advantage of that. Maybe it will have to be me.
Still doesn't support xinerama. Neither does doom 3. All they have to do is add one lousy command line argument just like mplayer has.
mplayer -xineramascreen 1 video.avi
Then make the application you are running show up only on that xinerama screen. It's rather simple, but nobody does it. Even linux native games like vegastrike don't do it. It makes gaming very difficult. Windows that are supposed to open in the middle of the screen show up in the empty space between monitors. And full screen apps engulf both screens.
I beg everyone developing linux apps to add proper support for xinerama. Please.
Maybe some people decided they were tired of buying the same game over and over again every year. I mean seriously. NHL and Madden are great sports games. Probably the best sports games ever (discounting 10 yard fight and Ice Hockey for the NES). But NHL '99 is every bit just as good as NHL 2k4 or 2k5. If you don't have it yet, buy the newest one. But if you've already got an NHL game or a madden game, there is no reason to buy a newer one.
So maybe a few of the dummies who rebuy the game every year finally realized the dumbness and decied to spend less money and try a game that might actually be a little bit different.
This is what we call division of labor. If you write software, like I do, then you should not be doing those other things. A graphic designer should make the website. A data entry person should enter in all the information. An interface designer should make the GUI. I think a big problem with jobs being hard to find, besides outsourcing, is companies pushing fewer people harder so they can hire fewer people and pay less money. I was just on a project that pushed me to do craptons of overtime, even on weekends. I will never do that again.
If you are a software developer you do your job of developing software. Anything else you tell the boss you don't know how to do that. Also be sure to note that you can learn to do it, but it will take time and money. And since this will be your first time doing it, you probably wont do the greatest job despite great effort. If your boss has half of a brain they will hire other people to do the other parts. If not, then work at your usual pace leaving the parts you don't know until laste. When the project is late, say I told you so!
Oh, and if losing your job worries you then grow some nuts and watch office space. There's more to life, its not worth it.
I can kind of understand when people are looking for a piece of software that does X, Y and Z and they can't find something for Windows. But for linux there are multiple online, free places where you can search for software that meets your needs.
I use gentoo, so my first place is esearch. If I want a ripping program I open up a term and do
esearch -Sc rip
. It's that easy. Look what came up!
[ N] media-sound/rip (1.07): A command-line based audio CD ripper and mp3 encoder
.
If you don't use gentoo and don't have esearch there are still places you can look. How about sourceforge or freshmeat? How about google?
Once you find the programs that do what you need such as ripping, encoding, playing, etc. You write a bunch of scripts to make it nicely and easily controlled via the command line.
An even better solution is to write scripts that use ncurses or such to make a better interface in the terminal. Then you can use gnu screen to make it even more awesome.
Ask slashdot should be specifically reserved for questions which either cannot be answered by computers easily or questions that take a very long time to research, and it is likely that someone on slashdot knows the answer off the top of their head.
I made an opengl C program for my computer graphics 2 class called opengl building blocks. It's a really simple program where you make 3 models consisting of 24 bit colored evenly sized cubes.
I used gtkglext. Pretty much I write the opengl app. Then I write the gtk gui. I make a drawing area widget and use gtkglext to put the opengl app in the drawing area. It's a beautiful thing.
Then if I want people to interact with the drawing area I can register gtk callback functions with any events on it. voila.
Also there is glut, but it is very simplistic. There is a slightly better thing called glutui or some such I forget. It is slightly better than glut with more gui elements. gtkglext I prefer because I get the full gtk2 library right there.
That's a good idea. You can also translate into postscript, then send the postscript right to the printer. You can also use ps2pdf to make pdfs from the postscript. People don't realize, but postscript is actually a programming language you can write in. Turning an XML document into a postscript should be not outside the real of possibility with XSL.
Both versions work about the same on my computer. One difference is that in linux xinerama is not supported, so I cannot play the game full screen while I have xinerama enabled. Actually, I'm using twinview, but as far as any apps are concerned its xinerama. Id said they would add support in a future release though, so it's all good.
You know. This is the kind of thing that is going to be obsoleted by the Nintendo DS. Play pickup games of chess, wirelessly with people you pass by in the street or train. Then upload all the rankings online wirelessly when you pass by an open access point.
I think two arm processors can do as well as a specialized chess machine. Especially a handheld one. Not to mention that playing with two screens, one of them being a touch screen should be quite nice.
Someone needs to make all kinds of board games for the DS, it is so perfect. I know at least in Japan they are making mah-jong. We need some European board games though, like Settlers, Tigris and Euphrates, or the best of all time Puerto Rico!
If there was Puerto Rico for the DS I would buy two copies.
Also, I know lots of people who would like to play go.
Nintendo is setting up some of the most original hardware I have ever seen. Me and my friends are making a hobby of thinking up things that were never before possible before the Nintendo DS. The possibilites are truly endless and amazing. I predict, and hope, that the Revolution will act as a hub for Nintendo DSes.
Here is my vision:
16 DSes can linke wirelessly. If the revolution can link to all those DSes then you can do this. Have a game with four teams, four players per team. The big screen attached to the revolution has the readout for the entire game, each player has two screens on their DS to do their personal bit.
Even better. If the revolution has a net connection. Then you can have two revolutions connect over the net or via lan cable. Two teams of 16 can fight each other. One team in one room in one country, the other team on the other side of the world. The teams can communicate with microphone that plugs into the ds. The idea of a game like this is the best thing ever. Imagine, online teamplay gaming without even a possibility of cheating!
Nintendo is making the hardware which makes this possible. But I am worried they will not make the software that takes full advantage of the possibilities. At least Warp Pipe looks like they are moving in that direction.
Right now I dual boot. Why? Steam. Steam is pretty much the only windows-only PC game left that I have a desire to play. Everything else is either so old I can emulate it with dosbox or wine perfectly. Or it is like doom3 with linux support. Mostly I don't play pc games much anymore.
As it stands I wont pay anything for steam. However, if Valve made Steam for linux I would pay. I would pay... 100 bucks for a lifetime. Or 5 bucks a month. As long as it worked and I get every game.
Meanwhile despite my dual booting I haven't actually played Steam in many months. That will probably change soon with HL2 and all.
You're close to being right. In a movie the movie and story are actually seperate things. Look at something like Citizen Kane. The film making is absolute perfection, but the story is not. Not to say the story is bad, but its been bested. My film-making I mean cinematography, camera work, editing all those thing you can do really well while still having a terrible story.
In video games you add one more component which movies do not have, and that is user interaction. The problem is that often one thing, story, graphics, gameplay, sound, or novelty outweighs the others. Example, recent final fantasy games are heavy on story and graphics in the fmvs. But they completely lack new or interesting gameplay. But people love these games anyway because the story and such is so great.
What game developers have to do is emphasize all of these areas. Have excellent story and gameplay at least. But not only make both of them great, they must be melded together. Look at the Matrix movie 1 vs 2/3. In movie 1 the action scenes and the stories blended together to form one entity. In th e Matrix 2/3 they were seperate things. You would get a 5 minute action scene followed by a 5 minute plot scene.
An example of a game that did everything right: Half-Life 1. Story, action, gameplay, graphics, sound all form one entity which is the perfection.
"...and I can't imagine that everyone has a crippled development environment...
Most windows developers have never used, do not know how to use and might not even know anything about *nix. They do not realize how crippled their development environments are because they have never used anything else. They often weigh the easiness of clicking as more valuable than the power of a nice build script that you would have to write.
In other words, the vast majority of windows build environments are extremely crippled. But the people using them either suck it up or don't know any better. Try mingw, a little better than cygwin.
I agree. I am also glad. It may seem big brother-ish at first, but in fact its the opposite. The key difference is that the information is free and available to everybody. That's the way all information wants to, and should, be.
Slashdot Mirror
He seems pretty confident that the draft is going to be reinstated no matter what. While I wont vote for bush he did say flat out that there wont be a draft as long as he is president. And despite him being incredibly stupid, he hasn't made any flat out blatant open lies. All of his lies are slippery with qualifications and such. And the people that write what he says are very careful. Also, it would take congress to have a draft and they voted almost unanimously against it just a short time ago. Obviously they could bring it up again and vote yes, but I can't imagine every person in congress changing their minds without a new catastrophic event.
I really hope that there is no new catastrophic event.
I, a friend of Schezar, hereby threaten to take the life of the president of the united states. I make this threat for the sole purpose of getting the secret service to come to my door. I think it would be great fun to talk to them, possibly go to court and learn some secrets. I think it would be especially awesome if they use any provisions of the Patriot act in their visit. That way when I go to court I can be the guy who challenges their constitutionality. Also, it would be great fun and bring an element of excitement into my life. Not only that, but it will give me a great story to tell everyone on the net and everyone I know/meet about how the secret service investigated me because they are so incredibly stupid they cannot differentiate a serious threat from a joking one.
This is just more of the same.
When will this nonsense end? Remember the days where it didn't matter so much who was president? I mean sure, you liked one guy better than the other, but if you lost it wasn't the end of the world. I long for those days. When politics existed, but in general everything just worked. But now through combination of media and other factors everything is about ten times worse. I just want to go back to the days when I don't have to worry about government so much. I'm a computer programmer, I want to spend my time thinking about software and gizmos and things without worrying about people dying, lying, cheating, stealing and taking away civil liberties. So let's do our best to get back to those days.
Oh, and anyone who wants to make a joke about those days not ever existing, I present to you the 90's when the internet and technology was more important that politics. And that's just example 1.
conscience would get the best of you eh? Obviously he's never heard of people without consciences. He's also never heard of people like me who have consciences but can act against them at will providing I can prove to myself that what I'm doing is correct despite feeling it is wrong.
wow. um, you started out ok, but what's with the intelligence insulting? I do realize that Nintendo doesn't own the rights to many of the NES games, and that would prevent them from releasing many of them. However, a slashdot post is not a bill in congress. I don't need to to specify every detail of every little thing. It's just casual conversation.
Consider yourself equally foe'd. I'd love to have a childish insult war with you, because you seem to like that sort of thing, but your slasdhot username says it all.
I can understand why a product like this is released in China. But why not also release it here? I mean, the only official X games in one stuff we get is Atari stuff. If we want legal NES games we have to go pay $20 for one game for the GBA. Yet china gets multiple N64 games in a single cheap unit? There are bootleg controllers you can buy with every NES ROM ever in a single unit. Nintendo, make an NES controller with every important NES game ever init. Then do the same thing for SNES. People will buy it. Hey, then you can put it online and people can pay 50 cents per rom. If you want to stop piracy/emulation you have to sell it.
Here is why a constitutional convention is scary. Right now we need ratification by 3/4 of the states. But the way that works is each individual state legislature spends a lot of time discussing it and such. At a constitutional convention a few representatives from each state discuss amongst themselves and can make amendments easily and quickly.
Second. Congress determines time and place of the convention. It is unknown if congress can set the terms for it as well. The supreme court would have to decide. If congress CAN set the terms, then it is safe because they can say something like "only issues relating to gay marriage can be discussed at this convention". If congress cannot set the terms then who knows. It does not necessarily mean that the constitution will be scrapped. But it does mean that whoever is at this convention will be in the drivers seat of the United States and collectively will be able to point it any way they choose.
And keep in mind, these people will be currently elected officials from gerrymandered districts in a two party system. The original constitutional convention was one of the very rare and few times in history when there was both political power and wisdom in the same room at the same time. Another convention would be a disaster. All the political power in the world with almost nil wisdom. And imagine the media there. If there is a constitutional convention I will probably do everything within my power to influence it for good and not for bad. And if it turns out poorly I'll have to run away.
While a convention brings great possibility for good. It is a very very scary thing you do not want. Granted, while it was going on it would be cool, historic, entertaining, exciting, etc. But the results would almost certaintly be unpleasant.
I agree mostly with this. However, I think an even better option is if every state did a split up of its electora votes in the way that Main does and Colorado is considering.
On a side note, it is very good that congress realizes this is an issue and is amending it in the usual way. We are only two states away from a constitutional convention, and that is a dangerous and scary thing for many reasons.
I don't know if attorney general is an elected position, but that doesn't matter. We need to send the message to people in our government that the more they do stuff like this the more likely they are to get our vote. The two presidential candidates have not even said a word about taking out evil corporations. And the third party candidates might say something about it, but have no track record of actually doing so. I want the people who represent me to know that if they do things that hurt record companies, the MPAA, media companies, etc. That I will proudly vote for them regardless of political affiliation.
Did you hear that?
I had this idea a while ago. That I should make a software company that has no office building. It would consists of a cabana, lots of really comfortable beach chairs, a big safe to store important stuffs in, and a wire box with network/server and a WAP. All the employees would lounge about by the pool, or in the pool with waterproof laptops, doing work and connecting via wireless.
I mean seriously, what beats coding on the beach? And customers would love to do business with us even if we charged more than the competition. I think its a winner. Every day will be Hawaiian shirt day.
OMG! THAT'S what the meta modes are! I set them up and they work perfectly. The panning mode is especially awesome. Now everything works great!
The best thing about twinview though is still having opengl span both screens. I wish someone would program something to take advantage of that. Maybe it will have to be me.
I know that python is pretty well integrated into the gimp. It should not be very difficult to make some sort of integrated tutorial type stuff.
Still doesn't support xinerama. Neither does doom 3. All they have to do is add one lousy command line argument just like mplayer has.
mplayer -xineramascreen 1 video.avi
Then make the application you are running show up only on that xinerama screen. It's rather simple, but nobody does it. Even linux native games like vegastrike don't do it. It makes gaming very difficult. Windows that are supposed to open in the middle of the screen show up in the empty space between monitors. And full screen apps engulf both screens.
I beg everyone developing linux apps to add proper support for xinerama. Please.
Maybe some people decided they were tired of buying the same game over and over again every year. I mean seriously. NHL and Madden are great sports games. Probably the best sports games ever (discounting 10 yard fight and Ice Hockey for the NES). But NHL '99 is every bit just as good as NHL 2k4 or 2k5. If you don't have it yet, buy the newest one. But if you've already got an NHL game or a madden game, there is no reason to buy a newer one.
So maybe a few of the dummies who rebuy the game every year finally realized the dumbness and decied to spend less money and try a game that might actually be a little bit different.
This is what we call division of labor. If you write software, like I do, then you should not be doing those other things. A graphic designer should make the website. A data entry person should enter in all the information. An interface designer should make the GUI. I think a big problem with jobs being hard to find, besides outsourcing, is companies pushing fewer people harder so they can hire fewer people and pay less money. I was just on a project that pushed me to do craptons of overtime, even on weekends. I will never do that again.
If you are a software developer you do your job of developing software. Anything else you tell the boss you don't know how to do that. Also be sure to note that you can learn to do it, but it will take time and money. And since this will be your first time doing it, you probably wont do the greatest job despite great effort. If your boss has half of a brain they will hire other people to do the other parts. If not, then work at your usual pace leaving the parts you don't know until laste. When the project is late, say I told you so!
Oh, and if losing your job worries you then grow some nuts and watch office space. There's more to life, its not worth it.
I use gentoo, so my first place is esearch. If I want a ripping program I open up a term and do . It's that easy. Look what came up! .
If you don't use gentoo and don't have esearch there are still places you can look. How about sourceforge or freshmeat? How about google?
Once you find the programs that do what you need such as ripping, encoding, playing, etc. You write a bunch of scripts to make it nicely and easily controlled via the command line.
An even better solution is to write scripts that use ncurses or such to make a better interface in the terminal. Then you can use gnu screen to make it even more awesome.
Ask slashdot should be specifically reserved for questions which either cannot be answered by computers easily or questions that take a very long time to research, and it is likely that someone on slashdot knows the answer off the top of their head.
I made an opengl C program for my computer graphics 2 class called opengl building blocks. It's a really simple program where you make 3 models consisting of 24 bit colored evenly sized cubes.
I used gtkglext. Pretty much I write the opengl app. Then I write the gtk gui. I make a drawing area widget and use gtkglext to put the opengl app in the drawing area. It's a beautiful thing.
Then if I want people to interact with the drawing area I can register gtk callback functions with any events on it. voila.
Also there is glut, but it is very simplistic. There is a slightly better thing called glutui or some such I forget. It is slightly better than glut with more gui elements. gtkglext I prefer because I get the full gtk2 library right there.
That's a good idea. You can also translate into postscript, then send the postscript right to the printer. You can also use ps2pdf to make pdfs from the postscript. People don't realize, but postscript is actually a programming language you can write in. Turning an XML document into a postscript should be not outside the real of possibility with XSL.
Both versions work about the same on my computer. One difference is that in linux xinerama is not supported, so I cannot play the game full screen while I have xinerama enabled. Actually, I'm using twinview, but as far as any apps are concerned its xinerama. Id said they would add support in a future release though, so it's all good.
You know. This is the kind of thing that is going to be obsoleted by the Nintendo DS. Play pickup games of chess, wirelessly with people you pass by in the street or train. Then upload all the rankings online wirelessly when you pass by an open access point.
I think two arm processors can do as well as a specialized chess machine. Especially a handheld one. Not to mention that playing with two screens, one of them being a touch screen should be quite nice.
Someone needs to make all kinds of board games for the DS, it is so perfect. I know at least in Japan they are making mah-jong. We need some European board games though, like Settlers, Tigris and Euphrates, or the best of all time Puerto Rico!
If there was Puerto Rico for the DS I would buy two copies.
Also, I know lots of people who would like to play go.
Are you listening Nintendo?
Nintendo is setting up some of the most original hardware I have ever seen. Me and my friends are making a hobby of thinking up things that were never before possible before the Nintendo DS. The possibilites are truly endless and amazing. I predict, and hope, that the Revolution will act as a hub for Nintendo DSes.
Here is my vision:
16 DSes can linke wirelessly. If the revolution can link to all those DSes then you can do this. Have a game with four teams, four players per team. The big screen attached to the revolution has the readout for the entire game, each player has two screens on their DS to do their personal bit.
Even better. If the revolution has a net connection. Then you can have two revolutions connect over the net or via lan cable. Two teams of 16 can fight each other. One team in one room in one country, the other team on the other side of the world. The teams can communicate with microphone that plugs into the ds. The idea of a game like this is the best thing ever. Imagine, online teamplay gaming without even a possibility of cheating!
Nintendo is making the hardware which makes this possible. But I am worried they will not make the software that takes full advantage of the possibilities. At least Warp Pipe looks like they are moving in that direction.
Right now I dual boot. Why? Steam. Steam is pretty much the only windows-only PC game left that I have a desire to play. Everything else is either so old I can emulate it with dosbox or wine perfectly. Or it is like doom3 with linux support. Mostly I don't play pc games much anymore.
As it stands I wont pay anything for steam. However, if Valve made Steam for linux I would pay. I would pay... 100 bucks for a lifetime. Or 5 bucks a month. As long as it worked and I get every game.
Meanwhile despite my dual booting I haven't actually played Steam in many months. That will probably change soon with HL2 and all.
You're close to being right. In a movie the movie and story are actually seperate things. Look at something like Citizen Kane. The film making is absolute perfection, but the story is not. Not to say the story is bad, but its been bested. My film-making I mean cinematography, camera work, editing all those thing you can do really well while still having a terrible story.
In video games you add one more component which movies do not have, and that is user interaction. The problem is that often one thing, story, graphics, gameplay, sound, or novelty outweighs the others. Example, recent final fantasy games are heavy on story and graphics in the fmvs. But they completely lack new or interesting gameplay. But people love these games anyway because the story and such is so great.
What game developers have to do is emphasize all of these areas. Have excellent story and gameplay at least. But not only make both of them great, they must be melded together. Look at the Matrix movie 1 vs 2/3. In movie 1 the action scenes and the stories blended together to form one entity. In th e Matrix 2/3 they were seperate things. You would get a 5 minute action scene followed by a 5 minute plot scene.
An example of a game that did everything right: Half-Life 1. Story, action, gameplay, graphics, sound all form one entity which is the perfection.
"...and I can't imagine that everyone has a crippled development environment...
Most windows developers have never used, do not know how to use and might not even know anything about *nix. They do not realize how crippled their development environments are because they have never used anything else. They often weigh the easiness of clicking as more valuable than the power of a nice build script that you would have to write.
In other words, the vast majority of windows build environments are extremely crippled. But the people using them either suck it up or don't know any better. Try mingw, a little better than cygwin.
I agree. I am also glad. It may seem big brother-ish at first, but in fact its the opposite. The key difference is that the information is free and available to everybody. That's the way all information wants to, and should, be.