If you read the article which you linked to, you'll see where they state that Liquidmetal is "Lighter than stainless steel but heavier than titanium". My guess would be the weight, and they wanted the powerbook as light as humany possible. Cost considerations might also be a factor in Liquidmetal vs Titanium.
This is a really good thing for UT. Not to bring up the endless UT vs Q3 debate but I've been sensing a lot of anti-UT sentiment among the Linux/Slashdot community that I just *DONT* understand. I tried to get UT working under Linux and it has been a real *pain*, and I've not found a lot of help, just a lot of "UT sux, get Q3" from most of the gamer-linux guru's I know. I'm hoping that while this isn't exactly open source (some of the libs for 3d will be opensource, according to what I read from the.plan) it will endear UT to more of the linux community.
In my opinion these are both REALLY good games. UT for the moment is the winner in terms of variety and cooperative play (my personal favorite variant), but I imagine the Q3 mod community will be churning add-ons out real quick.
Q3, of course, has the better "deathmatch", where they have always excelled. And the rendering and graphics are definitely better than UT. Regardless, I really dig both of these games, and hope more people with not be biased one way or another. Its just a game people.
I think Loki is heading in the right direction, and doing a good job of taking semi-new games and making them linux-playable. However, this is only the first step in getting Linux more gaming-viable (to the MASS market). While Civ:CtP and Heretic II are GREAT games, they are not new, and most gamers look for the "Latest, greatest" game to play, not something that came out months ago.
I'm seeing more and more games being developed simultaneously for multiple platforms (WinXX/Linux/Macintosh). I feel this is the MOST important thing needed for OS's like Linux (and Macintosh!) to thrive on an equal basis with Microsoft Windows. (Lets face it gang, MS has so much money and so much of an installed user base, that even if we do make Linux out-perform Windows in all aspects, including desktop-usability, they will STILL be around, and software/games will STILL be developed for it).
If you look at hot games like Quake3 and Neverwinter Nights(RPG) that are coming out. They are being developed for all 3 platforms. When they ship, I can play these exciting games on my linux machine! THIS makes Linux viable for people like me, a huge gamer that doesn't have the patience to wait XX months for the developer, Loki, or some other company to put out a Linux port for the game.
Again, Linux ports of software thats already released helps a lot. But I wont be able to eliminate my Windows98 system partition til the day I know I can play the newest hottest games can be played on Linux. -- Christopher Warden
I think I would be more excited about a Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms movie... Those seetings have some stories and characters that I would love to see done (well) on screen.
I dont have faith in hollywood to produce a good book to movie conversion. However, an original storyline in one of these universes that USES characters from the mainstream novels might be an interesting thing. Just as long as none of the primary characters in the story are from the mainstream novels. (Of course it just wouldn't be much of a grand FR storyline if you didn't toss Elminster in there at some point!) -- Chris Warden Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards for you are crunchy and taste good with Ketchup.
I may be wrong on this (If I was at home with my trusty bookshelf of AD&D manuals within reach, I could confirm...) but I think the big confusion over the height of elves in the D&D universe is that in the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance worlds (made by TSR, based off of D&D), Elves are as tall or taller than humans. Yet in the original D&D manuals and books (as well as the AD&D rulebooks, I imagine) they list elven height as being generally much shorter than humans.
A lot of readers of "D&D fiction" , ie, Dragonlance and FR (yes, there are more worlds than that, but they are the most popular 2 D&D universes) think of the elves from these works of fiction (and the numerous and beautiful artwork that can be found for them) when they think of elves.
I'm pretty sure thats where the confusion over the height of elves comes in. Does anyone have any manuals handy they can check out to confirm? (I'll have to investigate after my workday ends.....)
And I dont know about other AD&D fans, but I'm really looking forward to seeing the AD&D 3rd edition rulebooks comeout, I'm interested to see how they revise the rules-sets this time around. Especially since NeverWinter Nights will be using this ruleset. -- Chris Warden Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards for you are Crunchy and taste good with Ketchup.
(Quick side-note: Apprentice is a FREE win32 program that allows gamers to play Magic: The Gathering CCG over the internet. It is sponsored and licensed by Wizards of the Coast. It can be downloaded for free at http://www.dragonstudios.com/
Development on Apprentice for Linux is moderately dead in the water right now. We had one programmer work up an early alpha version and nobody in our group was able to get it running. We have not gotten any more revisions since then.
We're currently putting this on hiatus and the head programmer for the windows version (which is developed in Delphi), is waiting for the delphi development kit for linux that was announced not too long ago.
Our focus is mostly on a Macintosh version of Apprentice right now, as we have a MUCH higher demand for this than a linux version. However, if there are programmers out there with a serious interest in helping us port or re-write a version for Linux, please contact me via email.
I'm not surprised at all to learn that this issue was nothing but the standard over-reactionary response by the linux community. Especially when it involves RedHat, which people seem to love to jump all over and up and down on as soon and as quickly as possible. I am extremely pleased with Slashdot recently, as the staff appears to be doing a lot more background work on the news items they post. Its a nice thing to see Slashdot every now and then as the source of the news item rather than referring it somewhere else. I was also pleased when Roblimo did the investigate work on the Unisys/GIF thread insanity that was going on regarding that. I am also very pleased to see that Hemos got the official info from RedHat on this matter. It seems to me this is very good for slashdot, and I hope to continue to see the staff doing investigative news work to help keep the facts straight on issues like these. Good job guys.
As long as your creative control is in writing in your contract, it seems like this can only produce better things. If it wasn't in the contract, many people would be worried, and rightly so. I would guess that their contract probably gives exclusive advertising/media rights to Andover, and the ownership/control retains with Rob. Thats a beautiful thing and I commend you guys for being able to pull that off. I know firsthand the trials and expenses of running a high-traffic site. That will be a big burden taken off your shoulders.
I'm really looking forward to see what kind of improvements that can be worked out now that they will have more free time to come up with newer and better ideas for the site. Those that want to jump to conclusions probably wont even read your entire post about the details of the agreement. They will just run around the net spreading "Slashdot bought out!!!" information. Blah. Well, Kudos to you guys, and no matter what anybody says, this was a VERY VERY wise decision.
-- C. Warden Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
Aside from the fact of how unprofessional it is for a company like Mindcraft to post these kind of emails on their website, it also creates another problem.
Anyone who is familiar with dealing with this kind of negativity knows rule #1 when dealing with lamers: Do not acknowledge their efforts, because it only keeps them going.
By posting these emails, Mindcraft is encouraging people of this type to continue to assault Mindcraft with hate-mail in the hopes of getting their mail posted on their site. This in turn creates more negative publicity for Linux. In a way you almost have to wonder just a little bit whether that was the point.
Regardless, acknowledging this kind of childish behavior does no good. Posting it to slashdot makes it far worse. While Rob's "SERMON" may enlighten a small few, this posting will more likely encourage more linux fanatics (the type that cause these types of bad press) to continue to assault Mindcraft , Microsoft, etc in this manner, because, "Hey, if I bash them enuff, mebbe I can geet mentioned on/. ". I think Rob should think about that before putting another news item of this type.
Slashdot Mirror
If you read the article which you linked to, you'll see where they state that Liquidmetal is "Lighter than stainless steel but heavier than titanium". My guess would be the weight, and they wanted the powerbook as light as humany possible. Cost considerations might also be a factor in Liquidmetal vs Titanium.
Just a thought,
This is a really good thing for UT. Not to bring up the endless UT vs Q3 debate but I've been sensing a lot of anti-UT sentiment among the Linux/Slashdot community that I just *DONT* understand. I tried to get UT working under Linux and it has been a real *pain*, and I've not found a lot of help, just a lot of "UT sux, get Q3" from most of the gamer-linux guru's I know. I'm hoping that while this isn't exactly open source (some of the libs for 3d will be opensource, according to what I read from the .plan) it will endear UT to more of the linux community.
In my opinion these are both REALLY good games. UT for the moment is the winner in terms of variety and cooperative play (my personal favorite variant), but I imagine the Q3 mod community will be churning add-ons out real quick.
Q3, of course, has the better "deathmatch", where they have always excelled. And the rendering and graphics are definitely better than UT. Regardless, I really dig both of these games, and hope more people with not be biased one way or another. Its just a game people.
I think Loki is heading in the right direction, and doing a good job of taking semi-new games and making them linux-playable. However, this is only the first step in getting Linux more gaming-viable (to the MASS market). While Civ:CtP and Heretic II are GREAT games, they are not new, and most gamers look for the "Latest, greatest" game to play, not something that came out months ago.
I'm seeing more and more games being developed simultaneously for multiple platforms (WinXX/Linux/Macintosh). I feel this is the MOST important thing needed for OS's like Linux (and Macintosh!) to thrive on an equal basis with Microsoft Windows. (Lets face it gang, MS has so much money and so much of an installed user base, that even if we do make Linux out-perform Windows in all aspects, including desktop-usability, they will STILL be around, and software/games will STILL be developed for it).
If you look at hot games like Quake3 and Neverwinter Nights(RPG) that are coming out. They are being developed for all 3 platforms. When they ship, I can play these exciting games on my linux machine! THIS makes Linux viable for people like me, a huge gamer that doesn't have the patience to wait XX months for the developer, Loki, or some other company to put out a Linux port for the game.
Again, Linux ports of software thats already released helps a lot. But I wont be able to eliminate my Windows98 system partition til the day I know I can play the newest hottest games can be played on Linux.
--
Christopher Warden
--
Chris Warden
Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards for you are crunchy and taste good with Ketchup.
I may be wrong on this (If I was at home with my trusty bookshelf of AD&D manuals within reach, I could confirm...) but I think the big confusion over the height of elves in the D&D universe is that in the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance worlds (made by TSR, based off of D&D), Elves are as tall or taller than humans. Yet in the original D&D manuals and books (as well as the AD&D rulebooks, I imagine) they list elven height as being generally much shorter than humans.
A lot of readers of "D&D fiction" , ie, Dragonlance and FR (yes, there are more worlds than that, but they are the most popular 2 D&D universes) think of the elves from these works of fiction (and the numerous and beautiful artwork that can be found for them) when they think of elves.
I'm pretty sure thats where the confusion over the height of elves comes in. Does anyone have any manuals handy they can check out to confirm? (I'll have to investigate after my workday ends.....)
And I dont know about other AD&D fans, but I'm really looking forward to seeing the AD&D 3rd edition rulebooks comeout, I'm interested to see how they revise the rules-sets this time around. Especially since NeverWinter Nights will be using this ruleset.
--
Chris Warden
Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards for you are Crunchy and taste good with Ketchup.
(Quick side-note: Apprentice is a FREE win32 program that allows gamers to play Magic: The Gathering CCG over the internet. It is sponsored and licensed by Wizards of the Coast. It can be downloaded for free at http://www.dragonstudios.com/
Development on Apprentice for Linux is moderately dead in the water right now. We had one programmer work up an early alpha version and nobody in our group was able to get it running. We have not gotten any more revisions since then.
We're currently putting this on hiatus and the head programmer for the windows version (which is developed in Delphi), is waiting for the delphi development kit for linux that was announced not too long ago.
Our focus is mostly on a Macintosh version of Apprentice right now, as we have a MUCH higher demand for this than a linux version. However, if there are programmers out there with a serious interest in helping us port or re-write a version for Linux, please contact me via email.
I'm not surprised at all to learn that this issue was nothing but the standard over-reactionary response by the linux community. Especially when it involves RedHat, which people seem to love to jump all over and up and down on as soon and as quickly as possible.
I am extremely pleased with Slashdot recently, as the staff appears to be doing a lot more background work on the news items they post. Its a nice thing to see Slashdot every now and then as the source of the news item rather than referring it somewhere else.
I was also pleased when Roblimo did the investigate work on the Unisys/GIF thread insanity that was going on regarding that. I am also very pleased to see that Hemos got the official info from RedHat on this matter.
It seems to me this is very good for slashdot, and I hope to continue to see the staff doing investigative news work to help keep the facts straight on issues like these. Good job guys.
I'm really looking forward to see what kind of improvements that can be worked out now that they will have more free time to come up with newer and better ideas for the site. Those that want to jump to conclusions probably wont even read your entire post about the details of the agreement. They will just run around the net spreading "Slashdot bought out!!!" information. Blah. Well, Kudos to you guys, and no matter what anybody says, this was a VERY VERY wise decision.
-- C. Warden
Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
Aside from the fact of how unprofessional it is for a company like Mindcraft to post these kind of emails on their website, it also creates another problem.
/. ". I think Rob should think about that before putting another news item of this type.
Anyone who is familiar with dealing with this kind of negativity knows rule #1 when dealing with lamers: Do not acknowledge their efforts, because it only keeps them going.
By posting these emails, Mindcraft is encouraging
people of this type to continue to assault Mindcraft with hate-mail in the hopes of getting their mail posted on their site. This in turn creates more negative publicity for Linux. In a way you almost have to wonder just a little bit whether that was the point.
Regardless, acknowledging this kind of childish behavior does no good. Posting it to slashdot makes it far worse. While Rob's "SERMON" may enlighten a small few, this posting will more likely encourage more linux fanatics (the type that cause these types of bad press) to continue to assault Mindcraft , Microsoft, etc in this manner, because, "Hey, if I bash them enuff, mebbe I can geet mentioned on