and I think according to intel marketing teams, Pentium and Pentium II and so forth are different brands. ergo, only people with the original pentiums (p54c) and the pentium with mmx (p55c) are included.
counting the number of machines not running windows gives them some good stats into just what percentage of computers in schools need to be downgraded with intel boxen running their OS.
I guess it would be nice if someone took up the distribution mantle of those already produced games - like the original pulishers of the windows games, for example.
just so we can see them again.
maybe interest will pick up, and another company, after reading the truth about loki, will decide porting new games is a good idea.
surely now with the larger number of linux users things will be more positive.
very perceptive. but if MORE users liked to buy games, then they would have sold more. my estimation is that they could have made another 7000 sales worldwide which effectively doubles the number sold.
but sadly, although the mentality of linux gamers around here (new zealand) should be more like yours and mine, there's just not a lot of loyalty or interest in paying for things here. there are the exceptions as I've said, but they are very few and far between.
I'd probably go as far as to say that the numbers per capita are probably similar in the states for those who do and don't want to pay for linux games (or any games for that fact) but because we're such a small country, it makes it hard to find those people.
from my experience, more people around here are paying for windows games - not that many of those have actually paid for windows.
it's a weird mentality.
right now, I'm off to buy dungeon seige. well, maybe just a few more hours on my friends copy..
it's a good start. as you say, too late for loki, but hopefully not too late for the industry. if more companies start porting games or start producing equal quality games exclusively for linux, and linux users start actually buying them, then linux becomes a more viable option.
I personally will be buying dungeon siege for wintendows in a few days, but if I had the choice of it being available for linux - even if I had to wait a few months - I'd do that.
Really? I don't know why you would say that... do you have experience to that effect? Linux ideologues certainly wouldn't. Any serious gamer is likely to have a Windows partition anyway. Are you sure you aren't just making this up?
damn sure I'm not making it up. I have a machine dedicated to windows myself. and one for linux. all the serious gamers I know have windows partitions or dedicated windows machines like myself. and nobody I know has paid for windows.
people that I know that buy new computers buy parts or buy a system without an OS..
ok, I tell a lie - there are some people who have bought complete systems like dell or whatever and have got the OSs, but they tend to be less technical and don't know how to install an OS.
another example is Kylix by borland. they released a full commercial development suite and hardly anybody got into it because of the price.
so they released a free version on the premise that you only release GPL code. I can guess that borland want to make it popular among hackers and open source coders to make it more popular and thus more viable in a commercial environment.
perhaps another failing - other than scott - is that MOST linux users still think that free software means you don't have to pay money and would pirate loki games on the principle that everything should be free.
they would probably have doubled their sales if it wasn't for the users.
not that it would have helped loki, but I think that if someone else were to consider doing something similar to loki, they'd seriously have to think about it. their target audience don't like paying money, or are running their OS because they simply don't have the money.
linux users need to get out of that mentality for their own computing future to be fruitful.
one cable company tried all you can eat internet in this country some time back - namely chello.
although their cable connection were aimed at the residential market and were low speed, their network got hammered very badly by a few select users.
when they tried to cap the limit, people complained - including those who never even reached the limits. chello aren't here any more.
now we have cable and adsl, and both services from all providers have monthly caps. if you go over the cap, you pay for traffic by the meg.
i've personally got a high speed cable connection and I only have a 400mb/month international traffic limit. I get completely free national traffic, so I have to be careful not to go over my limits or I'm paying nearly 20 cents per meg.
of course, different plans are available. the slower your connection, the more your monthly traffic limit is.
that's the best way of controlling it, and it works well.
the worst i've ever seen is compuserve cutting the connection off if you go over the limit. not good in a business. the old company I worked for that had a dedicated connection thru compuserve were spending about $1000NZ per month and during december when everyone sent xmas images, and junk, the limit was reached in a couple of weeks. and they cut us off.
needless to say, we dropped them like a hot stinky sack of doodie.
moral of the story - paying extra is ok, getting cut off is bad. when time-warner change their policy to "suspending" accounts for over-use, then people will really start seeing red.
not that I'm condoning the purchase of a celine dion CD, but when this becomes a standard, it'll be worrying.
I play CDs on my PC and my playstation 2. another sony product.. is there any mention of whether they'll play on PS2's? is a PS2 CDrom like a PC or a "proper" cd player?
take into account that JB wasn't there when xtra was built, and it's been a few years since he left.
in those years, a lot of things have changed. the helpdesk has been outsourced, adsl was introduced, among other things (I haven't worked there for many years too.. so there's bound to be more I don't know about...)
but the infrastructure could have changed completely since JB was there.
everyone has their own way of doing things, and that's not clearer than in the IT industry. someone would have disagreed with JB's ideas of a good network design.
it's entirely likely that the infrastructure is now completely crap... but it's also possible that it's better than when JB was there.
they go on about everyone takes payouts, never believe what you read - except from themselves of course - and then go on to recommend one company on the entire planet you should go to and talk to them for a couple of paragraphs.
how ironically amusing. did anyone else fall for it? it's a glorified ad.
I gues it's a start, but there are so many ways of getting what you want on the net. file sharing progs, irc, im's, ftp, etc...
who is going to maintain this list? how often will it be updated? how often will the sites on the list be checked that they still exist?
it just shows one thing... the people in control have no idea about the technology.
i'm sure this will only lead to a precedent that other people will start whining "if child porn can be blocked, then all porn can be blocked. and if porn can be blocked, let's block hate sites. and these sites and those sites..."
pretty soon there will be nothing left to surf except the search engines..
oo.. google's cache might have child porn.. better block that too..
they are trying to protect their licences. being far from a microsoft advocate, i will try to look at this from an objective point of view.
they are trying to say, you have paid for one license, therefore you can only view it on one machine. simple. and understandable.
however - this may be turned to set a legal precedent for people breaking into your computer via programs like back orifice and sub seven, etc...
if the court won't do anything about them breaking and entering, maybe microsoft and the BSA can slap a fine on them for illegally using your software without a license.
of course, I've not studied this and may have already happened, in which case I spew forth redundant bile.
but it looks like they're hoping to make more out of their marketing of your pamphlets on their media..
but a few questions I have before I believe that these really do exist...
how thoroughly have these been tested? they are lighter which will lead to the ROMs being able to spin the discs faster, which could be good.
but... these look to be more flexible than floppy disks, and without the external jacket holding them flat. what if the computer is bumped in the middle of a burn?
instead of just a failed CD, will we end up having the media flop around inside the drive and cause damage?
or will the high speed of the spinning disc and the adapter help to keep them flat?
I think that if these can be produced, they will only really be usefull for marketing purposes much like the credit card sized CDs. just a gimmick.
they hold less, and for real applications this just isn't good enough. what would be more useful is trying to cram more data onto the same space.
DVD drives are a step up, but once we can fit 20gig or more onto a CD sized medium, which is accessible as CDs and relatively as cheap as CDs, then we can start making real use of them.. like backup drives.. at the moment, a decent size tape backup unit will cost up to 10's of thousands (NZ dollars anyway)... and a 110/220 gb DLT tape is $500 a piece.
jon, you make it sound like this is only a problem in america. it may have slipped your mind, but there is a whole world out there.
here in new zealand, we have these problems too. and there are more countries on this planet which I'll wager aren't much different.
I don't know about america, but in NZ, people are also misers. they want to pay nothing, but they want infinite amounts of service.
is it when they don't get that service that they turn to their own drastic measures?
or do they rely on their friends telling them not to bother with tech support?
or is it just ignorance/arrogance on their own part assuming their zero knowledge is better than the knowledge of those on the helpdesk?
either way, I subscribe to the elitist philosophy. I can't stand it when stupid people try to use computers. But they're everywhere. Users, script kiddies, everywhere.
but I have to ask.. what would be worse? if only some of us know about computers, or if everyone knows about computers?
my hats off to this guy. too many case mods I've seen at lans are just more of the same thing.. little window here, neon tubes there..
I've been trying to tower/mod my amiga 3000 for some time now, but don't have the patience this guy does. or probably the desk space either:)
what I would like to see is this guy get some venture capital and start his own business designing primo cases because, lets face it.. even a lot of the nice aluminium cases out there just look plain boring.
I've never noticed the ads before. I had to go back and look for them after reading this.
I agree with others who say this isn't newsworthy, but to comment, the excite article does say explicitly that the sponsored links are "on the section of Google's site that's devoted to sponsored links" - ie... the side.. in really small writing.
why didn't anybody kick up a stink when yahoo started putting on pop-up windows? or when groups.yahoo started making you click thru an ad randomly when reading message?
google has to make money from somewhere.. may as well be little tiny ads that nobody notices.
Slashdot Mirror
perhaps, but Pentium is a registered trademark, so unfortunately, Pentiums _is_ the plural in this case.
same with celerons..
and I think according to intel marketing teams, Pentium and Pentium II and so forth are different brands. ergo, only people with the original pentiums (p54c) and the pentium with mmx (p55c) are included.
sweet. that cuts out a lot of hassle right there.
counting the number of machines not running windows gives them some good stats into just what percentage of computers in schools need to be downgraded with intel boxen running their OS.
it's Spider-Man, not spiderman.
:)
Marvel marketing department will probably smack you upside the head if they see that...
you at least need the hyphen if not the capitals
I guess it would be nice if someone took up the distribution mantle of those already produced games - like the original pulishers of the windows games, for example.
just so we can see them again.
maybe interest will pick up, and another company, after reading the truth about loki, will decide porting new games is a good idea.
surely now with the larger number of linux users things will be more positive.
very perceptive. but if MORE users liked to buy games, then they would have sold more. my estimation is that they could have made another 7000 sales worldwide which effectively doubles the number sold.
I believe it.
but sadly, although the mentality of linux gamers around here (new zealand) should be more like yours and mine, there's just not a lot of loyalty or interest in paying for things here. there are the exceptions as I've said, but they are very few and far between.
I'd probably go as far as to say that the numbers per capita are probably similar in the states for those who do and don't want to pay for linux games (or any games for that fact) but because we're such a small country, it makes it hard to find those people.
from my experience, more people around here are paying for windows games - not that many of those have actually paid for windows.
it's a weird mentality.
right now, I'm off to buy dungeon seige. well, maybe just a few more hours on my friends copy..
possibly where you are. but around here, I only saw one person buy a loki game.
not that more than 3 retailers I know of in this country ever bought them to the shelves.
it's a good start. as you say, too late for loki, but hopefully not too late for the industry. if more companies start porting games or start producing equal quality games exclusively for linux, and linux users start actually buying them, then linux becomes a more viable option.
I personally will be buying dungeon siege for wintendows in a few days, but if I had the choice of it being available for linux - even if I had to wait a few months - I'd do that.
damn sure I'm not making it up. I have a machine dedicated to windows myself. and one for linux. all the serious gamers I know have windows partitions or dedicated windows machines like myself. and nobody I know has paid for windows.
people that I know that buy new computers buy parts or buy a system without an OS..
ok, I tell a lie - there are some people who have bought complete systems like dell or whatever and have got the OSs, but they tend to be less technical and don't know how to install an OS.
another example is Kylix by borland. they released a full commercial development suite and hardly anybody got into it because of the price.
so they released a free version on the premise that you only release GPL code. I can guess that borland want to make it popular among hackers and open source coders to make it more popular and thus more viable in a commercial environment.
perhaps another failing - other than scott - is that MOST linux users still think that free software means you don't have to pay money and would pirate loki games on the principle that everything should be free.
they would probably have doubled their sales if it wasn't for the users.
not that it would have helped loki, but I think that if someone else were to consider doing something similar to loki, they'd seriously have to think about it. their target audience don't like paying money, or are running their OS because they simply don't have the money.
linux users need to get out of that mentality for their own computing future to be fruitful.
if jon is being paid to write articles for slashdot, then he should be fired.
if he's not being paid, then his posting rights should be removed.
your overzealous use of buzzwords and lack of research on EVERYTHING you post astounds us all jon, yet fails to impress.
get a job pumping gas and keep your drug habit at home.
one cable company tried all you can eat internet in this country some time back - namely chello.
although their cable connection were aimed at the residential market and were low speed, their network got hammered very badly by a few select users.
when they tried to cap the limit, people complained - including those who never even reached the limits. chello aren't here any more.
now we have cable and adsl, and both services from all providers have monthly caps. if you go over the cap, you pay for traffic by the meg.
i've personally got a high speed cable connection and I only have a 400mb/month international traffic limit. I get completely free national traffic, so I have to be careful not to go over my limits or I'm paying nearly 20 cents per meg.
of course, different plans are available. the slower your connection, the more your monthly traffic limit is.
that's the best way of controlling it, and it works well.
the worst i've ever seen is compuserve cutting the connection off if you go over the limit. not good in a business. the old company I worked for that had a dedicated connection thru compuserve were spending about $1000NZ per month and during december when everyone sent xmas images, and junk, the limit was reached in a couple of weeks. and they cut us off.
needless to say, we dropped them like a hot stinky sack of doodie.
moral of the story - paying extra is ok, getting cut off is bad. when time-warner change their policy to "suspending" accounts for over-use, then people will really start seeing red.
not that I'm condoning the purchase of a celine dion CD, but when this becomes a standard, it'll be worrying.
I play CDs on my PC and my playstation 2. another sony product.. is there any mention of whether they'll play on PS2's? is a PS2 CDrom like a PC or a "proper" cd player?
computational power.
of this machine being utilised by ILM, pixar, or even id software..
computers that could crunch number that hard have just GOT to have a viable future in the entertainment industry.
surely these people can pull together to build me one.. um, I mean, build one to produce nice things for us to look at and play with.
it's make a hell of a chess player too.
take into account that JB wasn't there when xtra was built, and it's been a few years since he left.
in those years, a lot of things have changed. the helpdesk has been outsourced, adsl was introduced, among other things (I haven't worked there for many years too.. so there's bound to be more I don't know about...)
but the infrastructure could have changed completely since JB was there.
everyone has their own way of doing things, and that's not clearer than in the IT industry. someone would have disagreed with JB's ideas of a good network design.
it's entirely likely that the infrastructure is now completely crap... but it's also possible that it's better than when JB was there.
this should have been modded redundant.
as others have mentioned, you can single click.
but also as others have not mentioned X has been doing longer than the mac has been around.. this is the gui linux uses.
double clicking is useful as a confirmation of your choice of actions.
single clicking is called selection. double clicking is called activation.
they're two different things. but you can still single click because you use windows and windows gives you freedom.
but you've only had 5 or more years to learn that before posting this.
remember, just cos you like something doesn't mean everybody else will.
they go on about everyone takes payouts, never believe what you read - except from themselves of course - and then go on to recommend one company on the entire planet you should go to and talk to them for a couple of paragraphs.
how ironically amusing. did anyone else fall for it? it's a glorified ad.
I gues it's a start, but there are so many ways of getting what you want on the net. file sharing progs, irc, im's, ftp, etc...
... the people in control have no idea about the technology.
who is going to maintain this list? how often will it be updated? how often will the sites on the list be checked that they still exist?
it just shows one thing
i'm sure this will only lead to a precedent that other people will start whining "if child porn can be blocked, then all porn can be blocked. and if porn can be blocked, let's block hate sites. and these sites and those sites..."
pretty soon there will be nothing left to surf except the search engines..
oo.. google's cache might have child porn.. better block that too..
they are trying to protect their licences. being far from a microsoft advocate, i will try to look at this from an objective point of view.
they are trying to say, you have paid for one license, therefore you can only view it on one machine. simple. and understandable.
however - this may be turned to set a legal precedent for people breaking into your computer via programs like back orifice and sub seven, etc...
if the court won't do anything about them breaking and entering, maybe microsoft and the BSA can slap a fine on them for illegally using your software without a license.
of course, I've not studied this and may have already happened, in which case I spew forth redundant bile.
but it looks like they're hoping to make more out of their marketing of your pamphlets on their media..
but a few questions I have before I believe that these really do exist...
how thoroughly have these been tested? they are lighter which will lead to the ROMs being able to spin the discs faster, which could be good.
but... these look to be more flexible than floppy disks, and without the external jacket holding them flat. what if the computer is bumped in the middle of a burn?
instead of just a failed CD, will we end up having the media flop around inside the drive and cause damage?
or will the high speed of the spinning disc and the adapter help to keep them flat?
I think that if these can be produced, they will only really be usefull for marketing purposes much like the credit card sized CDs. just a gimmick.
they hold less, and for real applications this just isn't good enough. what would be more useful is trying to cram more data onto the same space.
DVD drives are a step up, but once we can fit 20gig or more onto a CD sized medium, which is accessible as CDs and relatively as cheap as CDs, then we can start making real use of them.. like backup drives.. at the moment, a decent size tape backup unit will cost up to 10's of thousands (NZ dollars anyway)... and a 110/220 gb DLT tape is $500 a piece.
we'll see how it goes
jon, you make it sound like this is only a problem in america. it may have slipped your mind, but there is a whole world out there.
here in new zealand, we have these problems too. and there are more countries on this planet which I'll wager aren't much different.
I don't know about america, but in NZ, people are also misers. they want to pay nothing, but they want infinite amounts of service.
is it when they don't get that service that they turn to their own drastic measures?
or do they rely on their friends telling them not to bother with tech support?
or is it just ignorance/arrogance on their own part assuming their zero knowledge is better than the knowledge of those on the helpdesk?
either way, I subscribe to the elitist philosophy. I can't stand it when stupid people try to use computers. But they're everywhere. Users, script kiddies, everywhere.
but I have to ask.. what would be worse? if only some of us know about computers, or if everyone knows about computers?
my hats off to this guy. too many case mods I've seen at lans are just more of the same thing.. little window here, neon tubes there..
:)
I've been trying to tower/mod my amiga 3000 for some time now, but don't have the patience this guy does. or probably the desk space either
what I would like to see is this guy get some venture capital and start his own business designing primo cases because, lets face it.. even a lot of the nice aluminium cases out there just look plain boring.
I've never noticed the ads before. I had to go back and look for them after reading this.
I agree with others who say this isn't newsworthy, but to comment, the excite article does say explicitly that the sponsored links are "on the section of Google's site that's devoted to sponsored links" - ie... the side.. in really small writing.
why didn't anybody kick up a stink when yahoo started putting on pop-up windows? or when groups.yahoo started making you click thru an ad randomly when reading message?
google has to make money from somewhere.. may as well be little tiny ads that nobody notices.