There was one old computer at a church I used to go to in elementary school that we could play games on. They were both Bible-themed games, and one of them was a first person shooter. The way they de-violenced this was by saying, "Noah's animals are hungry, and they need to be fed!" and you shot food at them until they got full and went to sleep. So there are some creative ways to make a nonviolent FPS game, and it sure helped take the edge off of forced church attendance, although I still resented it.
Let me rephrase that and add more detail: the cost of Windows, Office, and third-party commercial software is going to become an intolerably large and unnecessary part of the cost. Some bright people are going to sell computers for cheaper prices by using Open Source/Free stuff, and then they will probably catch on due to the fact that the hardware and stuff is good, and they're CHEAP!
I can post my first impressions, having moved from Opera to Mozilla about 15 minutes ago. First, Mozilla is feature-laden. It has a lot of stuff that you don't get in Opera, and it can do all the stuff that opera does, with a few exceptions. It has good control over JavaScript, which I like. It has plenty of options. It has Composer, for making web pages. It has a chat program, an email client, a DOM inspector, and all sorts of stuff. It's not quite as snappy as Opera UI-wise, but that's the price you pay for more features.
Don't forget cheap PCs. You've probably heard the argument before: as computers become cheaper, the cost of Microsoft products is going to become a considerable part of the cost of the computer. Why pay that if you don't have to? I can foresee cheap web terminals and simplified computers using linux, KDE/GNOME/whatever (whichever makes you feel happy), and Mozilla becoming fairly widepread. It's not a perfect user base, since it is for simplified things rather than general computer use, but it is a user base. Linux could grow from there.
It'll probably be a while until 2.0 is out. Who knows what sorts of things may be in that release? Judging by the amount of cool stuff in 1.0 (all the netscape stuff, XML UI stuff, calendar, miscellaneous goodies), there's no telling what may be in the future so far ahead of time.
One more gadget may not fix a problem, but it may certainly help. It can make the problem less likely to occur. If I were piloting a plane I would want lots of helpful gadgets covering my incompetent butt. (Hey, I don't know how to fly a plane...)
Still, it takes a great many gadgets to protect people from their own arrogance and incompetence. More than most planes have, although some planes do include some gadgets to protect you. The small Cessna plane doesn't let you go into a stall position, for example.
Nintendo is following the market into 3D games, but I really think that they should have kept making 2D Mario-like games. They are simple to play, and they are fun.
I miss Super Nintendo. Good thing I have an emulator.
I still think you are crazy. All the sources I have seen say that linux has preemptive multitasking. Perhaps you are talking about having a preemptive kernel (or something like that, I'm a bit hazy on the details), and there is a rather experimental patch for that. But Linux has supported preemptive multitasking for a long time. This differs from the systems used by old MacOSes and Win3.x, but pretty much all modern OSes support preemptive multitasking. Please don't spread misinformation.
Floppy disk drives are a way of moving files between computers that is typically reliable and system independant. The iMac doesn't have that ability, which can be annoying if you need it in a situation where you can't buy an external floppy drive. A manual eject for CDs is good for the times when something goes wrong with your computer and you want direct physical control over it. They are not relics of the past like punch cards.
Yes, this has many of the classic elements of a troll, like being annoying and giving the subtle impression that the poster is an idiot.
There are so many patches and fixes for Linux because people are fixing problems, rather than refusing to admit their existance and releasing bugfix releases periodically and calling them "Service Packs". With most linux software you can just download a recent stable version and you will get the latest fixes and stuff.
And how about the super nintendo game "evo"? It is based loosely on the theory of evolution. What if some creationists decided that it was a bad influence on kids and said, "Well, since this game isn't covered by the first amendment, let's ban it!"
Yes this is paranoid, but perhaps the **AA would make a deal with gateway: gateway puts content protecion into their mahines, the **AA lets them be in the content distribution racket.
Bet then perhaps we'd see a rise in people getting computers from little companies no one has ever heard of.
Mike Wong has a good rant about this percieved racism in Star Wars. I think it pretty well addresses the issue: you can see racism there, or you can fail to see any. I didn't see any, but perhaps I'm abnormal because I found Jar Jar to be funny.
Sometimes I wish I spoke Japanese. They no longer want to take over the world, they don't like nuclear bombs, unlike the US, which decided to build a whole new generation of smaller and friendlier nukes, and they're making gigantic computers!
If only people in the US would try making progress rather than devoting more resources to the "war on terror".
And they still try to prevent illegal copying of this software. If someone got a copy of a MSVC++ CD illegally, it would do this same thing. If someone got a WinXP CD illegally, it would benefit MS. So why are they still trying to crack down on piracy, when it is good for them?
Perhaps someone could make some open source thingy for doing this sort of thing, rip a bunch of music for it, put a lot of them in public places that hopefully the RIAA will overlook, don't publicise it, offer the tracks for a cheap price (half this? something affordable and convenient), then give the profits to FairTunes, where it will then go to the artists directly. People get music, artists get compensated, everybody is happy. Then you get sued...
They are doing this in India because they can make more money there by selling the tracks cheaply than overcharging horrendously, as they do in rich countries where they can get away wih it.
If they did something like this in America, I would use it. I would very gladly use it if the monet wet to the musicians via FairTunes (FairTracks?), without the big record companies and the RIAA getting their cut of the loot.
I still sometimes use C-x C-s to save in miscellaneous editors, and it works okay if I don't have anything selected. But mostly I just keep on using emacs so I can get stuff done. I was trying to make a pinglike program for Windows, but the Visual Studio GUI was either not flexible enough or too complicated for me to get the project to compile. I started using the command line, and then I just went to emacs, and I haven't regretted it since.
But on topic, I do think that this KVim thing will be yet another good editor, and it will be particularly nice to embed it in other programs.
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There was one old computer at a church I used to go to in elementary school that we could play games on. They were both Bible-themed games, and one of them was a first person shooter. The way they de-violenced this was by saying, "Noah's animals are hungry, and they need to be fed!" and you shot food at them until they got full and went to sleep. So there are some creative ways to make a nonviolent FPS game, and it sure helped take the edge off of forced church attendance, although I still resented it.
Let me rephrase that and add more detail: the cost of Windows, Office, and third-party commercial software is going to become an intolerably large and unnecessary part of the cost. Some bright people are going to sell computers for cheaper prices by using Open Source/Free stuff, and then they will probably catch on due to the fact that the hardware and stuff is good, and they're CHEAP!
I can post my first impressions, having moved from Opera to Mozilla about 15 minutes ago. First, Mozilla is feature-laden. It has a lot of stuff that you don't get in Opera, and it can do all the stuff that opera does, with a few exceptions. It has good control over JavaScript, which I like. It has plenty of options. It has Composer, for making web pages. It has a chat program, an email client, a DOM inspector, and all sorts of stuff. It's not quite as snappy as Opera UI-wise, but that's the price you pay for more features.
Look to the future!
It'll probably be a while until 2.0 is out. Who knows what sorts of things may be in that release? Judging by the amount of cool stuff in 1.0 (all the netscape stuff, XML UI stuff, calendar, miscellaneous goodies), there's no telling what may be in the future so far ahead of time.
Still, it takes a great many gadgets to protect people from their own arrogance and incompetence. More than most planes have, although some planes do include some gadgets to protect you. The small Cessna plane doesn't let you go into a stall position, for example.
This link doesn't go anywhere. It's probably just a joke.
I miss Super Nintendo. Good thing I have an emulator.
I still think you are crazy. All the sources I have seen say that linux has preemptive multitasking. Perhaps you are talking about having a preemptive kernel (or something like that, I'm a bit hazy on the details), and there is a rather experimental patch for that. But Linux has supported preemptive multitasking for a long time. This differs from the systems used by old MacOSes and Win3.x, but pretty much all modern OSes support preemptive multitasking. Please don't spread misinformation.
Floppy disk drives are a way of moving files between computers that is typically reliable and system independant. The iMac doesn't have that ability, which can be annoying if you need it in a situation where you can't buy an external floppy drive. A manual eject for CDs is good for the times when something goes wrong with your computer and you want direct physical control over it. They are not relics of the past like punch cards.
There are so many patches and fixes for Linux because people are fixing problems, rather than refusing to admit their existance and releasing bugfix releases periodically and calling them "Service Packs". With most linux software you can just download a recent stable version and you will get the latest fixes and stuff.
And how about the super nintendo game "evo"? It is based loosely on the theory of evolution. What if some creationists decided that it was a bad influence on kids and said, "Well, since this game isn't covered by the first amendment, let's ban it!"
Bet then perhaps we'd see a rise in people getting computers from little companies no one has ever heard of.
Just clarifying the reference.
for a single line break, and
for a new paragraph. Slashdot will ignore line breaks in your comments if you don't use these.
Mike Wong has a good rant about this percieved racism in Star Wars. I think it pretty well addresses the issue: you can see racism there, or you can fail to see any. I didn't see any, but perhaps I'm abnormal because I found Jar Jar to be funny.
It would be cool if we could have a sort of libertarian pseudo-communism like the one in Voyage From Yesteryear, by James P. Hogan, in most libraries.
What about people like me who live in backward rural places? Not everywhere has something.
If only people in the US would try making progress rather than devoting more resources to the "war on terror".
There is such a thing as a free lunch with Linux or one of the *BSDs. Too bad so few people see it.
And they still try to prevent illegal copying of this software. If someone got a copy of a MSVC++ CD illegally, it would do this same thing. If someone got a WinXP CD illegally, it would benefit MS. So why are they still trying to crack down on piracy, when it is good for them?
HURD
Linux
I have nothing against the hurd, I just think that the development money might be better spent making Linux more scalable.
Perhaps someone could make some open source thingy for doing this sort of thing, rip a bunch of music for it, put a lot of them in public places that hopefully the RIAA will overlook, don't publicise it, offer the tracks for a cheap price (half this? something affordable and convenient), then give the profits to FairTunes, where it will then go to the artists directly. People get music, artists get compensated, everybody is happy. Then you get sued...
If they did something like this in America, I would use it. I would very gladly use it if the monet wet to the musicians via FairTunes (FairTracks?), without the big record companies and the RIAA getting their cut of the loot.
But on topic, I do think that this KVim thing will be yet another good editor, and it will be particularly nice to embed it in other programs.