In reality, I suspect that there's a few protected classes that don't need it anymore, honestly. Disabled, though, probably needs to be for a a long while yet because of the nature of things. But you'd not be in trouble if you up-front said "Blacks Only", even if you're a blue eyed, red headed person. Again, it's not the same thing as the dollar store that was in a place of public accommodation that the assault on my wife occured.
The Pacific Northwest is a much nicer locale, IMO.
Oh, other parts of DFW's nice. But I'll agree, Oregon or Washington State is NICE. So's New England (where I am right now- Home's in DFW, but contract work takes me whereever I needs must go...)- it's just there's a few loopy people there messing up the works; about like Texas, really...:-D
It's not that they get a dozen or more dingbats in, they associate "Service Animal" with "Seeing Eye Dog" and don't go any further. I've seen restaurant managers try to send someone with a balance dog out the door because "seeing eye dogs are the only ones allowed" or "You're not blind...". (My wife gets the "you're not blind" one a LOT...).
I've seen all kinds of reactions, all of them the WRONG ones- and it matters little unless they've got the seeing eye harness, which everyone understands and has for some time now. We've got the vest on our dog and we still get accosted for varying reasons (like the ones I've mentioned...) that have little to do with what you state.
Your examples and analogies don't use protected classes- you CAN make a business that does cater solely to blue eyed redheads. They're not a protected class and it's no longer really a public accommodation, when you do that, now is it?
Person claims balance problems, doesn't appear to have any... Person claims vision issues, but doesn't appear to have any...
If the person's obviously disabled, you can tell. The legitimate ones that have hidden problems, for the most part, offer extra info (We typically do, unless someone's being an Asshat about it.) and are willing to discuss it further. People can have siezure dogs, legitimately. People can have balance dogs. And the list goes on and on. All legitimate. Typically, they will have a brightly colored vest, yellow, orange, or blue- with "Service Animal" and sometimes "Please don't pet me, I'm working!" on the vest. Some of them will have a tag with "Service Animal" and even the certification on the tag or collar. The honest people, typically, if you're nice about it, will tell you more.
You can ask if they're disabled. You can ask if the animal is a Service Animal.
That's IT. Asking more when it's not offered is harassment/assult (depending on the nature of how it's done...) and in violation of the law.
Uh, unfortunately that wasn't the reason. He just singled her out because she had a "dog"- I overheard the whole thing over the phone while she was talking to me and she's got several witnesses to that fact.
And, it's believable. I've had encounters with several different Police forces (Irving, Plano, Dallas, etc.) in various towns in the Metro area- the level of training in this regard (or rather the retention or the propensity for someone to act on his beliefs instead of what the law actually says) varies surprisingly a lot.
I suspect that these officers were that way.
And, if the owner cited Asthma, what in the HECK would they do if the person had a seeing eye dog? For that matter, what would YOU do? It's a rough call going there, believe me.
You never know when they're going to figure out whom you were and you're pulled over for some traffic violation... Never fun to have your ticket escalated on legitimate, but otherwise normally overlooked things- or detained for a little while. They might just take the opportunity to show you how MUCH of an "Asshat" they really are.:-)
Several magic words, and a law that says under those conditions he HAS to.
Place of public accommodation (You can claim that you're a "private" business- but if you let the "public" in...). Disabled/Handicapped is a Protected Class per the provisions of the ADA. Per the ADA, Service Animals are trained animals in the service of a handicapped person- NOT PETS. And the ADA explicitly requires admittance in a place of public accommodation for the conditions in question.
Otherwise, it's a Civil Rights Violation.
Just as the shop owner couldn't say No Blacks/Negros allowed on a sign, he's not allowed to disallow a handicapped person regardless of their handicap in question if they need a service animal to get about safely.
I suggest that you quit wearing your heart on your sleeve. You're lecturing me for things I never said or implied.
For that I apologize- but YOU try dealing with people going "Are you blind" in response to "It's a service animal" in response to a "You can't have that dog in here". I do it at least a half dozen times every time I go out to with my wife and she's in her power chair or the store's handicapped cart when they do it, especially at many Wal-Marts.
The response you got comes naturally when you ask the thing you ask- walk a mile in a man's shoes, I always say...
OK, the shopkeeper I understand but somehow I don't think that applies to an individual.
The ADA defines the "disabled" as a protected class. This means a handful of things. Just like you can't just fling racial slurs about with impunity and not pay a price for it, it also means you can't just walk up to a handicapped person and ask 20 questions about what their disability is or what their service animal does- it's deemed harassment or outright assault in the case of an individual doing it. It's worse if a store owner, manager, or employee does it because it's explicitly defined as a no-no in the law and has even harsher penalties involved with the act.
Per the ADA, a person is only legally allowed (whether they're a shopkeeper or just a person off the street) to ask two specific questions.
1) Are you disabled? 2) Is that a service animal?
If the answer is yes to the first and second, there is nothing further that you are legally allowed to ask (It'll open you up to the prospect of a nasty civil suit, believe it or not...). The person in question may, out of politeness and consideration to those around them, offer more information, such as their disability, any certifications for the service animal, etc.
Since I speak for my wife in things like this online, this extends to me as well...
In her case, she's got inoperable damage in four of her lumbar discs that causes extreme limitations on her mobility and drastically affects her balance. In the case of the dog in question, she's been trained to warn her she's about ready to fall and to go get help or fetch things when she's down. For extended distances, she has to be pushed around in a wheel chair or go around in her power chair. The dog in question has been trained and certified as such. I suggest you go check the provisions of the ADA a little closer- and not everybody that claims that they're "disabled" and their "little dog" (this dog is a "little dog" but it, unlike the other animals has been trained and certified...) is a "service animal"- which is bogus. If you question that she's legitimately disabled, I will also add that she has another card, not for the dog, that indicates that by law she has to be wanded instead of going through the magnetometer at US Airports as she has a pain management implant that allows her the mobility she DOES have.
They'd be held accountable for allowing access to a seeing eye dog- even if they are allergic to dogs. And they'd NEVER try anything like what happened if it were a seeing eye dog. If they're allergic to dogs, perhaps they shouldn't be working in a line of work where they're potentially exposed to service animals in the first place. The law's explicit there and they have to abide by it or close shop.
If they aren't disabled/handicapped (and just having the swinger or plates doesn't count enough...) then they can be held actionable for fraud- just because the law says something doesn't allow you to mis-represent yourself.
Heh... Voting with wallets... As if that honestly will work under all circumstances...
Lots of things people are voting with their wallets with- but people like RIAA keep blaming the losses their member labels see as "piracy" not what's actually happening.
The reality is, there's a threshold at which "money talks" doesn't even come into play- that's what the ADA was supposed to adjust. Once you're on the other side of the equation, you begin to realize how badly the ADA's provisions are actually needed- because there's not enough people to hit the thresholds in most cases for money to talk like you imply it always will.
It doesn't work- and I don't buy it. But then, you're probably never faced with issues of the handicapped; I am all the time with my Grandmother, Mother, and my Wife, each with problems that put them all into those protected classes.
To you, I will only say, "Try looking at it as if there was nothing there like the ADA- REALISTICALLY".
If you've never experienced the flip side, you wouldn't know.
One of the law's provisions is that service animals are largely unilaterally allowed in places of public accomodation. My wife is disabled as was our housemate at the time. They both have service dogs- certified as such. Service animals aren't just seeing-eye or deaf dogs, there's a lot more there than that- and they do actually help out in a lot of ways and you can't just arbitrarily separate them from their owners willy-nilly. Needs to be very specific reasons- and there's not a lot of them.
My wife went into a store with said service dog and was physically accosted for her "dog"- the owner didn't care if she was disabled or the dog was legally allowed. The police in Plano, TX backed up his "right" to refuse service to anyone- never mind that like the blind and seeing eye dogs, she's in a protected class (For this VERY reason...).
Until you experience the other side, you will never understand, never get that it's not QUITE the thing you make it out to be. I only hope that neither you or any of those you love and care for end up needing to be covered under the laws or that you aren't on the receiving end of someone like yourself with that comment you just made.
1) 480p's actually MUCH better than most people have EVER seen (QCIF is what most people are typically used to- ever TRY using WebTV or any other internet set-top of that era on anything less than the highest end TV's?? If it were more like what everyone CLAIMS NTSC is capable of, I'd not have went through the last 6 years worth of pain that I have up to this point...)
2) HDTV's are not going to get mass adoption for at LEAST another year and a half to two.
3) Can you convince me that all that higher resolution makes for better games or is it just more glitz for nada?
The reality is that for 720p or 1040p you're going to field as much muscle as a mid-end PC in this day and age.
Retail on this without the TV interfaces is $300 or so. With the TV component interfaces it's $400-500 (Damn, that's the 360's retail isn't it now?). Nintendo's trying for the best mix of playability, visual quality, and PROFITABILITY.
But with the arrival of spam spooging botnets, it becomes a little more difficult. They can forge all kinds of legit domain name/address combos that have NOTHING to do with the actual spam (Hell, I've gotten all kinds of bounces from my domain and others I get mail from, claiming I sent the spam and I never did any such thing...). As they get more clever, blacklisting will become less and less effective- and can cause other problems like blacklisting legit domains without open relays, etc. It's a reactive solution to the problem, much like Anti-Virus programs and Anti-Spyware programs are for Windows users.
We need to come up with PROACTIVE solutions to this or it'll just keep going and going, each iteration escalating the current problem to newer heights.
Sorry to say- 10 seconds to send something is "okay". Nearly 2 minutes to send something, even if it's done in the background with a batch processing thread- it's stupid. It's as bad as the problem it's attempting to solve. Sorry, just don't buy that one- answers to the problem need to be FIXING things not just shifting the problems about. Also keep in mind that spammers aren't using a single machine to spooge spam to you now- they're using botnets. What does it matter if you take 100 seconds to send the mail message if he/she has got thousands of machines doing his bidding to send it all out? 100 seconds to process isn't enough time to make things impractical for them to spam with these days- so your proposed solution made it more difficult to send things for normal mail AND did NADA to discourage spam in reality.
The problem with using the MUA to factorize is that the spam spraying engines can do the same thing. Captcha's are a little better, but only really slightly. Most of them can be busted quickly with modern machines- and once they've done the captcha, they can spooge the crap to you indescriminately.
What needs to be done is better design and an actual re-think of email with a new RFC- but that's not likely to happen; if it were it'd have happened a long time ago instead of all this reactive crap to the problem. Too much inertia, not enough pain (yet) to actually DO something in an honest attempt to fix the real problem. Having said this, I think the trigram approaches coupled with signature analysis and human tagging of obvious SPAM will go a while longer. As it stands, I've seen a real spike of late in my inbox (30%? Heh... More like 300% in the last couple of days...) and I'm needing to re-work my SpamAssassin settings on my mail server or come up with something else to block the crap from ever being sent to my mailboxes...
Heh... You say this, but you've not a SINGLE clue on what it takes to get access to such things as "the latest games".
Part of what destroyed Loki was they bit off more than they could chew, more than they could afford. Each game published costs a given amount of money, typically anywhere from $10-50k for the privilege to just simply see the code and port it. In some cases, even MORE than that (Just look at licensing fees for the some of the hot engines out there- they can charge as much as a quarter mil...).
And then, it depends on the quality of the code as to how long it takes- not how difficult it is to go from D3D to OGL and whatnot. Most of the problems end up being that someone took shortcuts they shouldn't have or were so C++ happy they did something ill-advised that VC++ let them get away with.
Michael's got some slick stuff in the pipeline- some relatively recent stuff, from what I understand, with more on the way. Besides, all you Windows users are a fickle bunch, looking for that next fix that never quite seems to come. You're not my market- yet... Soon enough though- one major change of hardware in your future and you'll be begging Microsoft for another activation, and they may insist on you paying for a new license... Heh... Either you'll pay up to Bill, you'll go console only, go MacOS, or go Linux. In the case of the last three, your dollars makes an ecosystem that encourages those very titles you crave for to happen for Linux.
Ahem... Have you ported a game? Do I know whom you are?
In reality, I know or know of MOST of the people professionally doing this very thing.
Direct3D to OpenGL's fun, but not impossible- and with OpenGL 2.0, most of the "fun" just goes away. Sound? Most of the major players out there are using Miles, FMOD, or OpenAL- ALL OF WHICH ARE SUPPORTED UNDER LINUX. It's only when someone uses something "odd" that sound's a real problem. File I/O is NOT different, paths might be, but you shouldn't be using that sort of thing in the first place. Data should be in a "My Documents" type place which has it's analog in Linux as well. Networking... Heh... Only if you use DirectPlay. I know, I've written several compatibility layers to other networking layers. OpenPlay, Grapple, TNL, Quake3 Networking, and RakNet come immediately to mind- and in all cases, they're EASIER to use than DirectPlay. And more fun, they're cross-platform. If you use WinSock2, you're mostly using BSD Sockets in the first place so if you roll your own it's a short effort to port it. OGL Vendor extensions? DO NOT USE THEM. Nobody in their right mind does anyhow- everyone uses the ARB or EXT extensions which is an easy thing to figure out.
What takes time is not the functionality. It's that people keep doing BAD coding practices, etc. and that takes time to undo. I really, really wish people would quit trotting out this tripe about it being "hard" to make Linux to Windows ports because of the things you describe.
How you do you know he's NOT doing all of that plus the BLOG... After all, he OWNS a pro basketball team amongst other things... I'm pretty sure if he's not married, he's definitely not without in the nookie department either.
Slashdot Mirror
In reality, I suspect that there's a few protected classes that don't need it anymore, honestly. Disabled, though, probably needs to be for a a long while yet because of the nature of things. But you'd not be in trouble if you up-front said "Blacks Only", even if you're a blue eyed, red headed person. Again, it's not the same thing as the dollar store that was in a place of public accommodation that the assault on my wife occured.
Oh, other parts of DFW's nice. But I'll agree, Oregon or Washington State is NICE. So's New England (where I am
right now- Home's in DFW, but contract work takes me whereever I needs must go...)- it's just there's a few loopy
people there messing up the works; about like Texas, really...
It's worse than you think it is.
It's not that they get a dozen or more dingbats in, they associate "Service Animal" with "Seeing Eye Dog" and don't go
any further. I've seen restaurant managers try to send someone with a balance dog out the door because "seeing eye dogs
are the only ones allowed" or "You're not blind...". (My wife gets the "you're not blind" one a LOT...).
I've seen all kinds of reactions, all of them the WRONG ones- and it matters little unless they've got the seeing eye
harness, which everyone understands and has for some time now. We've got the vest on our dog and we still get accosted
for varying reasons (like the ones I've mentioned...) that have little to do with what you state.
ROFLMAO! I don't live there but I end up visiting on a regular basis... Must always mind my manners. :-)
Two magic words change it all...
PROTECTED CLASS.
Your examples and analogies don't use protected classes- you CAN make a business that does cater solely to blue eyed redheads.
They're not a protected class and it's no longer really a public accommodation, when you do that, now is it?
Person claims balance problems, doesn't appear to have any...
Person claims vision issues, but doesn't appear to have any...
If the person's obviously disabled, you can tell. The legitimate ones that have hidden problems, for
the most part, offer extra info (We typically do, unless someone's being an Asshat
about it.) and are willing to discuss it further. People can have siezure dogs, legitimately. People
can have balance dogs. And the list goes on and on. All legitimate. Typically, they will have a brightly
colored vest, yellow, orange, or blue- with "Service Animal" and sometimes "Please don't pet me, I'm working!"
on the vest. Some of them will have a tag with "Service Animal" and even the certification on the tag or
collar. The honest people, typically, if you're nice about it, will tell you more.
You can ask if they're disabled.
You can ask if the animal is a Service Animal.
That's IT. Asking more when it's not offered is harassment/assult (depending on the nature of how
it's done...) and in violation of the law.
Uh, unfortunately that wasn't the reason. He just singled her out because she had a "dog"- I overheard
the whole thing over the phone while she was talking to me and she's got several witnesses to that fact.
And, it's believable. I've had encounters with several different Police forces (Irving, Plano, Dallas, etc.)
in various towns in the Metro area- the level of training in this regard (or rather the retention or the
propensity for someone to act on his beliefs instead of what the law actually says) varies surprisingly a lot.
I suspect that these officers were that way.
And, if the owner cited Asthma, what in the HECK would they do if the person had a seeing eye dog? For that
matter, what would YOU do? It's a rough call going there, believe me.
You never know when they're going to figure out whom you were and you're pulled over for :-)
some traffic violation... Never fun to have your ticket escalated on legitimate, but otherwise
normally overlooked things- or detained for a little while. They might just take the
opportunity to show you how MUCH of an "Asshat" they really are.
Several magic words, and a law that says under those conditions he HAS to.
Place of public accommodation (You can claim that you're a "private" business- but if you let the "public" in...).
Disabled/Handicapped is a Protected Class per the provisions of the ADA.
Per the ADA, Service Animals are trained animals in the service of a handicapped person- NOT PETS.
And the ADA explicitly requires admittance in a place of public accommodation for the conditions in question.
Otherwise, it's a Civil Rights Violation.
Just as the shop owner couldn't say No Blacks/Negros allowed on a sign, he's not allowed to disallow a handicapped
person regardless of their handicap in question if they need a service animal to get about safely.
For that I apologize- but YOU try dealing with people going "Are you blind" in response to "It's a service animal" in response
to a "You can't have that dog in here". I do it at least a half dozen times every time I go out to with my wife and she's in her
power chair or the store's handicapped cart when they do it, especially at many Wal-Marts.
The response you got comes naturally when you ask the thing you ask- walk a mile in a man's shoes, I always say...
The ADA defines the "disabled" as a protected class. This means a handful of things. Just like you can't just fling
racial slurs about with impunity and not pay a price for it, it also means you can't just walk up to a handicapped
person and ask 20 questions about what their disability is or what their service animal does- it's deemed harassment
or outright assault in the case of an individual doing it. It's worse if a store owner, manager, or employee does it
because it's explicitly defined as a no-no in the law and has even harsher penalties involved with the act.
Per the ADA, a person is only legally allowed (whether they're a shopkeeper or just a person
off the street) to ask two specific questions.
1) Are you disabled?
2) Is that a service animal?
If the answer is yes to the first and second, there is nothing further that you are legally
allowed to ask (It'll open you up to the prospect of a nasty civil suit, believe it or not...).
The person in question may, out of politeness and consideration to those around them, offer
more information, such as their disability, any certifications for the service animal, etc.
Since I speak for my wife in things like this online, this extends to me as well...
In her case, she's got inoperable damage in four of her lumbar discs that causes extreme
limitations on her mobility and drastically affects her balance. In the case of the dog
in question, she's been trained to warn her she's about ready to fall and to go get help
or fetch things when she's down. For extended distances, she has to be pushed around in
a wheel chair or go around in her power chair. The dog in question has been trained and
certified as such. I suggest you go check the provisions of the ADA a little closer- and
not everybody that claims that they're "disabled" and their "little dog" (this dog is a
"little dog" but it, unlike the other animals has been trained and certified...) is a
"service animal"- which is bogus. If you question that she's legitimately disabled, I
will also add that she has another card, not for the dog, that indicates that by law she
has to be wanded instead of going through the magnetometer at US Airports as she has a
pain management implant that allows her the mobility she DOES have.
They'd be held accountable for allowing access to a seeing eye dog- even if they
are allergic to dogs. And they'd NEVER try anything like what happened if it were
a seeing eye dog. If they're allergic to dogs, perhaps they shouldn't be
working in a line of work where they're potentially exposed to service animals
in the first place. The law's explicit there and they have to abide by it or close shop.
If they aren't disabled/handicapped (and just having the swinger or plates doesn't count enough...) then
they can be held actionable for fraud- just because the law says something doesn't allow you to mis-represent
yourself.
But it takes a bit to get everything taken care of...
Heh... Voting with wallets... As if that honestly will work under all circumstances...
Lots of things people are voting with their wallets with- but people like RIAA keep blaming
the losses their member labels see as "piracy" not what's actually happening.
The reality is, there's a threshold at which "money talks" doesn't even come into play- that's what
the ADA was supposed to adjust. Once you're on the other side of the equation, you begin to realize
how badly the ADA's provisions are actually needed- because there's not enough people to hit the
thresholds in most cases for money to talk like you imply it always will.
It doesn't work- and I don't buy it. But then, you're probably never faced with issues of
the handicapped; I am all the time with my Grandmother, Mother, and my Wife, each with problems
that put them all into those protected classes.
To you, I will only say, "Try looking at it as if there was nothing there like the ADA- REALISTICALLY".
If you've never experienced the flip side, you wouldn't know.
One of the law's provisions is that service animals are largely unilaterally allowed in places of public
accomodation. My wife is disabled as was our housemate at the time. They both have service dogs- certified
as such. Service animals aren't just seeing-eye or deaf dogs, there's a lot more there than that- and they
do actually help out in a lot of ways and you can't just arbitrarily separate them from their owners willy-nilly.
Needs to be very specific reasons- and there's not a lot of them.
My wife went into a store with said service dog and was physically accosted for her "dog"- the owner didn't
care if she was disabled or the dog was legally allowed. The police in Plano, TX backed up his "right" to
refuse service to anyone- never mind that like the blind and seeing eye dogs, she's in a protected class
(For this VERY reason...).
Until you experience the other side, you will never understand, never get that it's not QUITE
the thing you make it out to be. I only hope that neither you or any of those you love and care
for end up needing to be covered under the laws or that you aren't on the receiving end of someone
like yourself with that comment you just made.
1) 480p's actually MUCH better than most people have EVER seen (QCIF is what most people are typically used to- ever TRY using WebTV or any other internet set-top of that era on anything less than the highest end TV's?? If it were more like what everyone CLAIMS NTSC is capable of, I'd not have went through the last 6 years worth of pain that I have up to this point...)
2) HDTV's are not going to get mass adoption for at LEAST another year and a half to two.
3) Can you convince me that all that higher resolution makes for better games or is it just more glitz for nada?
The reality is that for 720p or 1040p you're going to field as much muscle as a mid-end PC in this day and age.
Retail on this without the TV interfaces is $300 or so. With the TV component interfaces it's $400-500 (Damn,
that's the 360's retail isn't it now?). Nintendo's trying for the best mix of playability, visual quality,
and PROFITABILITY.
But with the arrival of spam spooging botnets, it becomes a little more difficult. They can forge all kinds
of legit domain name/address combos that have NOTHING to do with the actual spam (Hell, I've gotten all
kinds of bounces from my domain and others I get mail from, claiming I sent the spam and I never did any
such thing...). As they get more clever, blacklisting will become less and less effective- and can cause
other problems like blacklisting legit domains without open relays, etc. It's a reactive solution to the
problem, much like Anti-Virus programs and Anti-Spyware programs are for Windows users.
We need to come up with PROACTIVE solutions to this or it'll just keep going and going, each iteration
escalating the current problem to newer heights.
Sorry to say- 10 seconds to send something is "okay". Nearly 2 minutes to send something, even if it's
done in the background with a batch processing thread- it's stupid. It's as bad as the problem it's
attempting to solve. Sorry, just don't buy that one- answers to the problem need to be FIXING things
not just shifting the problems about. Also keep in mind that spammers aren't using a single machine to
spooge spam to you now- they're using botnets. What does it matter if you take 100 seconds to send the
mail message if he/she has got thousands of machines doing his bidding to send it all out? 100 seconds
to process isn't enough time to make things impractical for them to spam with these days- so your proposed
solution made it more difficult to send things for normal mail AND did NADA to discourage spam in reality.
The problem with using the MUA to factorize is that the spam spraying engines can do the same thing.
Captcha's are a little better, but only really slightly. Most of them can be busted quickly with
modern machines- and once they've done the captcha, they can spooge the crap to you indescriminately.
What needs to be done is better design and an actual re-think of email with a new RFC- but that's not
likely to happen; if it were it'd have happened a long time ago instead of all this reactive crap
to the problem. Too much inertia, not enough pain (yet) to actually DO something in an honest attempt
to fix the real problem. Having said this, I think the trigram approaches coupled with signature
analysis and human tagging of obvious SPAM will go a while longer. As it stands, I've seen a real
spike of late in my inbox (30%? Heh... More like 300% in the last couple of days...) and I'm needing
to re-work my SpamAssassin settings on my mail server or come up with something else to block the crap
from ever being sent to my mailboxes...
Heh... You say this, but you've not a SINGLE clue on what it takes to get access to such things
as "the latest games".
Part of what destroyed Loki was they bit off more than they could chew, more than they could afford.
Each game published costs a given amount of money, typically anywhere from $10-50k for the privilege
to just simply see the code and port it. In some cases, even MORE than that (Just look at licensing
fees for the some of the hot engines out there- they can charge as much as a quarter mil...).
And then, it depends on the quality of the code as to how long it takes- not how difficult it is
to go from D3D to OGL and whatnot. Most of the problems end up being that someone took shortcuts
they shouldn't have or were so C++ happy they did something ill-advised that VC++ let them get away
with.
Michael's got some slick stuff in the pipeline- some relatively recent stuff, from what I understand,
with more on the way. Besides, all you Windows users are a fickle bunch, looking for that next fix
that never quite seems to come. You're not my market- yet... Soon enough though- one major change
of hardware in your future and you'll be begging Microsoft for another activation, and they may
insist on you paying for a new license... Heh... Either you'll pay up to Bill, you'll go console only,
go MacOS, or go Linux. In the case of the last three, your dollars makes an ecosystem that encourages
those very titles you crave for to happen for Linux.
Ahem... Have you ported a game? Do I know whom you are?
In reality, I know or know of MOST of the people professionally doing this very thing.
Direct3D to OpenGL's fun, but not impossible- and with OpenGL 2.0, most of the "fun" just goes away.
Sound? Most of the major players out there are using Miles, FMOD, or OpenAL- ALL OF WHICH ARE SUPPORTED UNDER LINUX. It's only when someone uses something "odd" that sound's a real problem.
File I/O is NOT different, paths might be, but you shouldn't be using that sort of thing in the first place. Data should be in a "My Documents" type place which has it's analog in Linux as well.
Networking... Heh... Only if you use DirectPlay. I know, I've written several compatibility layers to other networking layers. OpenPlay, Grapple, TNL, Quake3 Networking, and RakNet come immediately to mind- and in all cases, they're EASIER to use than DirectPlay. And more fun, they're cross-platform. If you use WinSock2, you're mostly using BSD Sockets in the first place so if you roll your own it's a short effort to port it.
OGL Vendor extensions? DO NOT USE THEM. Nobody in their right mind does anyhow- everyone uses the ARB or EXT extensions which is an easy thing to figure out.
What takes time is not the functionality. It's that people keep doing BAD coding practices, etc. and that takes time to undo. I really, really wish people would quit trotting out this tripe about it being "hard" to make Linux to Windows ports because of the things you describe.
Considering that most of the mainline games use OpenAL (because it's portable to more than Windows, including consoles...) in the first place...
How you do you know he's NOT doing all of that plus the BLOG... After all, he OWNS a pro basketball team amongst other things... I'm pretty sure if he's not married, he's definitely not without in the nookie department either.
In the case of the computer, it's PTD's...Pr0n Transmitted Diseases...