Nethack holds a record where I'm concerned: it's the game I've failed to get into the most frequently.
It promises depth. It promises adventure. It promises to be better than sliced bread. From the descriptions, it's exactly the game I've been looking for all my life. Yet in actual practice, I still find staring at a grid of ASCII characters, trying to learn an interface more cryptic than Emacs, and dying permanently every five minutes to be somehow just not fun.
Hmm... it's about the time of year when I try it again. They say there are graphical front-ends which answer two of my three objections... maybe if I try one of those...
I am sure the next conspiracy will be coming right up with the next Microsoft-related post here at/.
Every post is a Microsoft-related post here at/.! Hadn't you noticed? Microsoft are behind SCO and Diebold, Microsoft are buying G5s (probably trying to keep them out of the hands of switching Windows users), Microsoft have patented the wheel, Microsoft have killed BSD, Microsoft are buying Google, Microsoft are posting dupes on Slashdot...
If you think the Apple discussions are bad, it's obvious you don't read the BSD ones very often.* I mean, at least in the Apple posts you can't predict the exact wording of the trolls...
* Yes, I know OS X is a BSD. I'm talking about the Sections here on Slashdot.
If somebody at Microsoft Research writes a relatively trivial application-level chunk of code, and they choose to integrate it into the OS, then, um, how else do you expect them to describe it?
As with Inktomi, Teoma has no free Add URL page -- but also as with Inktomi, Teoma crawls the web, so if you have links pointing at your web site, you may get included naturally.
In other words, you only have to pay if you want a guarantee that your site will appear. If you're popular, it'll probably end up there anyway.
Re:Axiom: Everything will be Unix-like
on
Microsoft's new CLI
·
· Score: 3, Funny
> One thing that really irks me about the current CMD is that you can't do complex network operations with it unless you map a new drive letter. > Now, if Cygwin would tweak Bash to complete the job before MS, I'd be much happier...
Er, it's already there. A transcript from a Cygwin bash session I just ran:
You get rated 'Insightful' for stating what OpenSource zealots hope.
No, you get rated insightful for noting what MS has done in the past, and extrapolating the future of their next products based on that.
The difference being?
Re:Much of this could be done in linux...
on
Microsoft's new CLI
·
· Score: 1
> So why not use perl from the command line??
Because most people who know _any_ perl already know sh well enough to get by. And are you volunteering to be the one who explains to the python fans why the next version of their Linux distro boots into perl?
> Why are potential disease vectors running as root?
How do you know they are?
Could you please point me to the source of your knowledge that the shell of an operating system which isn't planned to be released for several years will, in several years time, run all commands as root?
But noone is making "real" adventures anymore (either of the text type, or in the Sierra/Lucas style), with a very small number of exceptions (I'd count Deus Ex and System Shock 2
Try Revolution - I think Broken Sword 3 probably counts as a rather "realer" adventure game than Deus Ex.
> and before you ask, I can't be bothered to type them out - but I bet you I could find 100 features that apple had in their OS before Windows, or before Linux.
How much?
And what about little things like dynamic memory management and real multitasking? Even Windows had them back in 1996, while Apple only introduced them in OS X.
How many times do we have to say it, comparing KDE/Gnome etc.. to OSX isn't comparing Linux with OSX. You're comparing a desktop environment that just happens to run on Linux with OSX.
If you're going to compare OSX and Linux then you should be looking at the kernel performance.
Then you shouldn't be comparing OSX to Linux - you should be comparing Darwin to Linux.
Let's be realistic here. "Linux", these days, effectively means "Linux + XFree86 + KDE or Gnome". If you say Linux, that's what most people think of. Even a large proportion of Slashdot readers. And what most of these people would say, to refer to the kernel, would be "the Linux kernel".
That this is technically "wrong" is irrelevant. Consider the word "America" as an analogy. "Technically" it refers to a continent - but in practice, if I say "America", nearly everyone will think of the USA - even many Canadians! Likewise, if I say "England", most people outside Scotland and Wales will think of Great Britain. And likewise, if I say "Linux", most people who've heard of it will... okay, they'll think of a command line, but if I say "Linux" in the same breath as "OS X", they'll think of KDE or Gnome.
So... comparing KDE/Gnome, running on a Linux kernel, to OSX, is comparing Linux with OSX. Sorry, but that's the way the world sees it, and therefore that's the way it is.
Slashdot Mirror
> I am going to mail dead trees to them.
Well, I suppose that will probably get their attention, but can you afford enough stamps?
Uh, yeah, of course everyone who has an xbox bought a PS2 just to play GTA. How silly of me to forget that only rich people play video games.
> fox - foxen -- no
>
> the pattern isn't generalizable.
Fox - VIXEN. The feminine form is derived from this suffix.
Those not familiar with rot13 probably don't quite fit into Nethack's target audience...
> Paper ballots are the way to go. But if we did that, we might not know the outcome of the elections right away...
This is true - countries using paper ballots with human counters sometimes don't know the outcome of the election until the next day!
Nethack holds a record where I'm concerned: it's the game I've failed to get into the most frequently.
It promises depth. It promises adventure. It promises to be better than sliced bread. From the descriptions, it's exactly the game I've been looking for all my life. Yet in actual practice, I still find staring at a grid of ASCII characters, trying to learn an interface more cryptic than Emacs, and dying permanently every five minutes to be somehow just not fun.
Hmm... it's about the time of year when I try it again. They say there are graphical front-ends which answer two of my three objections... maybe if I try one of those...
If you think the Apple discussions are bad, it's obvious you don't read the BSD ones very often.* I mean, at least in the Apple posts you can't predict the exact wording of the trolls...
* Yes, I know OS X is a BSD. I'm talking about the Sections here on Slashdot.
If somebody at Microsoft Research writes a relatively trivial application-level chunk of code, and they choose to integrate it into the OS, then, um, how else do you expect them to describe it?
> Say what you will about Squaresoft games... but the music in them has always been beautiful.
Final Fantasy I MIDIs, anybody?
What, nobody?!
In other words, you only have to pay if you want a guarantee that your site will appear. If you're popular, it'll probably end up there anyway.
That's enough korny shell jokes already!
> Now, if Cygwin would tweak Bash to complete the job before MS, I'd be much happier...
Er, it's already there. A transcript from a Cygwin bash session I just ran:Okay, so I didn't press enter, but I think the point is made.
> Oh and tab completition, it's worthless without tab completition!
Windows 2000's "cmd.exe" shell already includes tab completion.
> So why not use perl from the command line??
Because most people who know _any_ perl already know sh well enough to get by. And are you volunteering to be the one who explains to the python fans why the next version of their Linux distro boots into perl?
> Most of the stuff you'd normally access under /proc you can get by accessing the registry via any COM aware scripting language.
/proc/registry.
And, with Cygwin, everything you'd normally access in the registry you can get at under
What goes around...
> Why are potential disease vectors running as root?
How do you know they are?
Could you please point me to the source of your knowledge that the shell of an operating system which isn't planned to be released for several years will, in several years time, run all commands as root?
> This is ... the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
No - this is really happening.
> and before you ask, I can't be bothered to type them out - but I bet you I could find 100 features that apple had in their OS before Windows, or before Linux.
How much?
And what about little things like dynamic memory management and real multitasking? Even Windows had them back in 1996, while Apple only introduced them in OS X.
Let's be realistic here. "Linux", these days, effectively means "Linux + XFree86 + KDE or Gnome". If you say Linux, that's what most people think of. Even a large proportion of Slashdot readers. And what most of these people would say, to refer to the kernel, would be "the Linux kernel".
That this is technically "wrong" is irrelevant. Consider the word "America" as an analogy. "Technically" it refers to a continent - but in practice, if I say "America", nearly everyone will think of the USA - even many Canadians! Likewise, if I say "England", most people outside Scotland and Wales will think of Great Britain. And likewise, if I say "Linux", most people who've heard of it will... okay, they'll think of a command line, but if I say "Linux" in the same breath as "OS X", they'll think of KDE or Gnome.
So... comparing KDE/Gnome, running on a Linux kernel, to OSX, is comparing Linux with OSX. Sorry, but that's the way the world sees it, and therefore that's the way it is.
> You're mistaken. The court system operates independently of the government.
Except for, you know, that little bit where the highest judges in the land are all political appointees... now that's what I call independent!