It is a Vega Strike mod, hence the link to VS (as the GPL engine) in the/. article.
What the article doesn't really mention is that the Privateer Remake development crew is mostly Vega Strike developers. I believe Privateer is one of the games that inspires the VS developers, although VS itself is a very different game universe. Once the VS engine was in a position to make a Privateer Remake possible then they poured a lot of effort into making it.
I look forward to future releases that should continue to improve upon the graphics 'ported' from the original Privateer and bring the remake further up to date.
Um you should try Gnumeric. It's probably more functional than Corel's spreadsheet and supports far more bigger spreadsheets than 65k by 65k. I'm not sure how many, though. And it works in Windows as of the 1.4 release. It's really a beacon of FOSS office applications and rarely gets the credit it deserves.
As much as this is a parody, it is a travesty that there is no mention of the British in the WWII description. I know this is trying to mock the yanks, but it's a bit harsh to overlook the Brits who didn't capitulate like the French (whose south sided with the Nazis).
Although to be fair, there's more mention of the Brits in the piece than there is in Saving Private Ryan.
It's amazing that people wonder why there's such a binge drinking culture in Britain.
I think Labour has figured it out though. 24 hour licenses for bars means that in the short term we can see beautiful people all the time. Increased immigration means in 10-20 years time we won't need to drink quite so much to see beautiful people. Very clever.
"Do you really think that Microsoft has a 90% profit margin on Office?"
No, you're right, that's a ridiculous assertion. It's probably closer to 900000% give or take (well, probably give) a few zeros.
I imagine they recoup their development costs and then some and a significant some at that since they still make huge profits in spite of their many other money-losing wings of the business (MSN? XBox? etc).
If you call mplayer (a media player with the most comprehensive format support you'll find anywhere) half-baked then you are sadly deluded.
Admittedly gmplayer isn't the most brilliant interface, but as a gecko plugin it works flawlessly and not only runs happily in-browser but also offers fullscreen playback for stuff you view in-browser. That is a damn useful feature that (IIRC) you won't find in realplayer or MS media player browser plugins.
With regards to your sarcastic take on KDE and Gnome, they are totally different DEs with different approaches, architecture, and language choice. Do you honestly think we'd make faster progress if we pigeon-holed people into one or the other? Half of the development impetus comes from the passion of the developers. Remove the choice for them to work on what they feel is [potentially] the best platform and you remove much of the emotion involved and hence the desire and motivation.
This is not the corporate world when focusing on one thing is best because that's how you make money. The freedom and choice that you deride is not only what makes Free Software so attractive but what provides the reason that most people develop for it; I don't think many people would volunteer their services to Microsoft.
There is more than logistics at work here. You, and others who scorn at Free Software diversity, would do well to appreciate that.
"The problem with the patent system today is that the patents are often not in the hands of those that produce and implement the patents in question. Instead, they are concentrated into holding companies that use them to cash in on patent infringments."
Perhaps a solution is to make patents something that only an individual can own (or jointly own if multiple individuals make the discovery). That way, the power would be redistributed from corporations to the scientists/inventors who make the discoveries, and the corporations would only benefit through contractual agreements with said scientists/inventors. It wouldn't stifle R&D as corporations would sponsor projects as part of the contracts to utilize pending patents. And it would reduce frivelous patents because individuals would have less capital to execute them.
I think it's a bad analogy to suggest gun makers should develop extra safety features. I think it would be better to compare it to making gun manufacturers take far greater care that their guns do not end up in the hands of criminals.
Why not fine a gun manufacturer or a gun shop (or both) every time one of their guns is used in a crime? They're providing the accessory that enables the crime, thus making them an accessory.
Gun lobbyists would call that unfair, saying there is no reasonable way they can prevent guns from being used in crimes because you would have to physically track a gun it's entire lifetime, from owner to owner, to make sure that it at least didn't get into the hands of a felon. Even then, how do you know a citizen will become a felon at some point. It's a ludicrous to think the gun manufacturers and sales outlets could ever prevent ciminals acquiring their guns.
And it's ludicrous to think that P2P developers could prevent people with illegal intentions from misusing their software. So California looks to punish everybody by effectively outlawing P2P software by outlawing it's creation - which is what this bill may as well be.
If Microsoft did this or opened up their sources, it would be a MASSIVE boost for FOSS. The total peace of mind from patent worry and amount of extra code available... it would be a very good thing for the FOSS world.
But sadly it would also be a bad thing for Microsoft who would be shutting off half their future revenue. So it won't be happening.
It's not "Giving away the IP library" as far as Wall Street is concerned because everyone knows you can't charge money for open source software! How could it compete against closed source stuff?
Sorry, gotta nitpick...
Besides the pedantic fact that open source software is not the same as Free software, you can bundle Free software with closed source software in many ways making money out of it.
However, Free software can not become closed source software, which is where the IP is 'protected'.
Simplicity is just not a solid argument for keeping something legal though. Anyone can walk into a shop, put an item for sale in their pocket, and walk out without paying. Does that mean stealing should become legal because it's incredibly simple to do?
I'm not condoning the INDUCE act but we, as a community, have to come up with much more robust reasoning to successfully argue against it and change the minds of the people who matter.
"The problem is that much more time is wasted trying to decipher poorly written emails than, if the writer had taken the time to write it properly in the first place."
This just in, "Grammar police arrest unary comma in the above sentence."
"You now owe me $2.00"
And you now owe me $5 for correcting your mistake.
"I often wonder how she was able to (lie/cheat/steal) her way into that position."
Missed one... sleep her way...
No you silly/. reader, not the snoring type.
Re:Welcome to capitalism
on
HIV Vaccine
·
· Score: 1
"Particularly in countries with a national health service funded by general taxation, paying lots of money to drugs companies is not an efficient use of resources. Directing the same money to universities to perform the research would ensure development of the same life-saving drugs while also ensuring that the drugs can be made available to all who need them."
Not to mention make the testing procedures more impartial. How many nightmare stories have we heard about companies essentially producing fraudulent test results (by either disregarding negative tests or outright lying) in order to make sure they can sell the drug and make back the R&D investment? Impartiality really is a necessity in this kind of field if the end result is one that is guarranteed to be fit for consumption.
I'm sure a good entry could adjust the font and still be accepted.
Sadly, looking at the entries thus far there is a distincy lack of good entries... don't people realise that half the point of a splash screen image is to at least either represent or showcase the application in question?
The current entries are all simply photographs slapped onto the template. What rubbish.
I look forward to revisiting the wiki site in a few days when the real artists amongst the FOSS world have had a crack of the whip, rather than these wannabes are simply submitted an attempt for the sake of it. I would be aghast to learn if any of those intial attempts took more than 15 minutes. And I would doubt it if any of the authors could even seriously say his splash screen was good enough to be part of one of the premier FOSS applications.
"Gentoo's current installation process makes it impossible to have a functioning system without knowing the following:
* How partition and disk structure works
* How GCC actually functions
* How the kernel is installed and configured
* At least something about runlevels and init scripts"
That's utter rubbish.
The partitioning / disk structure is basically a 1-time following of the Gentoo manual. You can get through it without knowing anything other than the simple fact partitions reside on a single hard disk. That's hardly knowing how it all works.
How GCC functions? Don't make me laugh. "emerge foo" does not induce an in-depth understanding of GCC. Copying the basic CFLAGS from the documentation doesn't either. I'd wager the majority of Gentoo users (bearing in mind I'm a Gentoo user who has accumulated >2600 forum posts) don't really understand GCC at all other than knowing it's a tool that compiles.
As to how the kernel is installed and configured, most people somewhat bumble through that and a little thing called 'genkernel' is making said bumbling a lot easier to do.
As for runlevels and init scripts, again it's just a case of following the docs rather than knowing what they are and how they work.
Please, do not confuse "being aware they exist" and "understanding", with the term 'knowing' implying the latter. And Gentoo is a MILLION miles away from LFS. Aside from the fact (almost) everything gets compiled and they are both Linux, there really just aren't that many similarities.
I would suggest that it's more the time taken to set up Gentoo rather than the difficulty of it (which isn't that difficult for the majority whom the docs serve well) is what provides the entry barrier. Don't get me wrong, for the willing it can be an invaluable process that does introduce them to the fundamental Linux concepts. BUT the majority of users who get through the installation process are still woefully short of the knowledge needed to maintain a healthy system and you get a lot of silly posts in the forums as a consequence. I should know, I've made a few myself.
"I have to agree with many other comments: the use of haskell eliminated it as a choice for me. I use subversion instead, and still looking for a better vcs. I checked all the available free (and some non-free) systems and all of them have major warts."
Why did it being in Haskell eliminate it as a choice? What kind of anal reason is that? Surely it's irrelevant what language anything is written in, insetad what matters is how good the program is. Or do you eliminate Haskell-based apps because you are a doting user who commits bug fixes back to projects? I doubt it.
The theory of patches is also more complex than you make it out to be. You only describe one of the simpler facets of the theory.
Slashdot Mirror
It is a Vega Strike mod, hence the link to VS (as the GPL engine) in the /. article.
What the article doesn't really mention is that the Privateer Remake development crew is mostly Vega Strike developers. I believe Privateer is one of the games that inspires the VS developers, although VS itself is a very different game universe. Once the VS engine was in a position to make a Privateer Remake possible then they poured a lot of effort into making it.
I look forward to future releases that should continue to improve upon the graphics 'ported' from the original Privateer and bring the remake further up to date.
Um you should try Gnumeric. It's probably more functional than Corel's spreadsheet and supports far more bigger spreadsheets than 65k by 65k. I'm not sure how many, though. And it works in Windows as of the 1.4 release. It's really a beacon of FOSS office applications and rarely gets the credit it deserves.
As much as this is a parody, it is a travesty that there is no mention of the British in the WWII description. I know this is trying to mock the yanks, but it's a bit harsh to overlook the Brits who didn't capitulate like the French (whose south sided with the Nazis).
Although to be fair, there's more mention of the Brits in the piece than there is in Saving Private Ryan.
It's amazing that people wonder why there's such a binge drinking culture in Britain.
I think Labour has figured it out though. 24 hour licenses for bars means that in the short term we can see beautiful people all the time. Increased immigration means in 10-20 years time we won't need to drink quite so much to see beautiful people. Very clever.
"Do you really think that Microsoft has a 90% profit margin on Office?"
No, you're right, that's a ridiculous assertion. It's probably closer to 900000% give or take (well, probably give) a few zeros.
I imagine they recoup their development costs and then some and a significant some at that since they still make huge profits in spite of their many other money-losing wings of the business (MSN? XBox? etc).
If you call mplayer (a media player with the most comprehensive format support you'll find anywhere) half-baked then you are sadly deluded.
Admittedly gmplayer isn't the most brilliant interface, but as a gecko plugin it works flawlessly and not only runs happily in-browser but also offers fullscreen playback for stuff you view in-browser. That is a damn useful feature that (IIRC) you won't find in realplayer or MS media player browser plugins.
With regards to your sarcastic take on KDE and Gnome, they are totally different DEs with different approaches, architecture, and language choice. Do you honestly think we'd make faster progress if we pigeon-holed people into one or the other? Half of the development impetus comes from the passion of the developers. Remove the choice for them to work on what they feel is [potentially] the best platform and you remove much of the emotion involved and hence the desire and motivation.
This is not the corporate world when focusing on one thing is best because that's how you make money. The freedom and choice that you deride is not only what makes Free Software so attractive but what provides the reason that most people develop for it; I don't think many people would volunteer their services to Microsoft.
There is more than logistics at work here. You, and others who scorn at Free Software diversity, would do well to appreciate that.
"The problem with the patent system today is that the patents are often not in the hands of those that produce and implement the patents in question. Instead, they are concentrated into holding companies that use them to cash in on patent infringments."
Perhaps a solution is to make patents something that only an individual can own (or jointly own if multiple individuals make the discovery). That way, the power would be redistributed from corporations to the scientists/inventors who make the discoveries, and the corporations would only benefit through contractual agreements with said scientists/inventors. It wouldn't stifle R&D as corporations would sponsor projects as part of the contracts to utilize pending patents. And it would reduce frivelous patents because individuals would have less capital to execute them.
But isn't William Shatner getting a little old to fight it?
Maybe we could turn to Chuck Norris, even though he usually specializes in enemies of the totally human kind.
Just who is the modern-day hero?
Is it cos I is black?
"This has been possible in Linux (and some proprietary Unices) for some time now. Why the need for a separate OS?"
Why the need for any competing software at any level? Why not just focus on existing stuff and forget innovating through new ideas in new software?
I'm glad Linus didn't talk like that.
I think it's a bad analogy to suggest gun makers should develop extra safety features. I think it would be better to compare it to making gun manufacturers take far greater care that their guns do not end up in the hands of criminals.
Why not fine a gun manufacturer or a gun shop (or both) every time one of their guns is used in a crime? They're providing the accessory that enables the crime, thus making them an accessory.
Gun lobbyists would call that unfair, saying there is no reasonable way they can prevent guns from being used in crimes because you would have to physically track a gun it's entire lifetime, from owner to owner, to make sure that it at least didn't get into the hands of a felon. Even then, how do you know a citizen will become a felon at some point. It's a ludicrous to think the gun manufacturers and sales outlets could ever prevent ciminals acquiring their guns.
And it's ludicrous to think that P2P developers could prevent people with illegal intentions from misusing their software. So California looks to punish everybody by effectively outlawing P2P software by outlawing it's creation - which is what this bill may as well be.
I know the above comment was somewhat facetious but the bugzilla.gnome.org search form is perfectly usable.
On my Mac... oh, wait, I had to see my Mac to pay the mortgage. At least I own my home now.
What the hell are you babbling about?
If Microsoft did this or opened up their sources, it would be a MASSIVE boost for FOSS. The total peace of mind from patent worry and amount of extra code available... it would be a very good thing for the FOSS world.
But sadly it would also be a bad thing for Microsoft who would be shutting off half their future revenue. So it won't be happening.
It's not "Giving away the IP library" as far as Wall Street is concerned because everyone knows you can't charge money for open source software! How could it compete against closed source stuff?
Sorry, gotta nitpick...
Besides the pedantic fact that open source software is not the same as Free software, you can bundle Free software with closed source software in many ways making money out of it.
However, Free software can not become closed source software, which is where the IP is 'protected'.
Perhaps it would have been if Linus and Linux hadn't shown up?
Simplicity is just not a solid argument for keeping something legal though. Anyone can walk into a shop, put an item for sale in their pocket, and walk out without paying. Does that mean stealing should become legal because it's incredibly simple to do?
I'm not condoning the INDUCE act but we, as a community, have to come up with much more robust reasoning to successfully argue against it and change the minds of the people who matter.
"But the negatives: ..."
Summary: requires more petrol [gas] and makes more noise.
Um, that sounds like an American motorist's dream.
There's also the Vega Strike B5 Mod, which is in the unusual position of having a lot of models and nobody to do the plot/scripting.
There's some really good eye candy in the VS B5 forum.
"The problem is that much more time is wasted trying to decipher poorly written emails than, if the writer had taken the time to write it properly in the first place."
This just in, "Grammar police arrest unary comma in the above sentence."
"You now owe me $2.00"
And you now owe me $5 for correcting your mistake.
"I often wonder how she was able to (lie/cheat/steal) her way into that position."
/. reader, not the snoring type.
Missed one... sleep her way...
No you silly
"Particularly in countries with a national health service funded by general taxation, paying lots of money to drugs companies is not an efficient use of resources. Directing the same money to universities to perform the research would ensure development of the same life-saving drugs while also ensuring that the drugs can be made available to all who need them."
Not to mention make the testing procedures more impartial. How many nightmare stories have we heard about companies essentially producing fraudulent test results (by either disregarding negative tests or outright lying) in order to make sure they can sell the drug and make back the R&D investment? Impartiality really is a necessity in this kind of field if the end result is one that is guarranteed to be fit for consumption.
I'm sure a good entry could adjust the font and still be accepted.
Sadly, looking at the entries thus far there is a distincy lack of good entries... don't people realise that half the point of a splash screen image is to at least either represent or showcase the application in question?
The current entries are all simply photographs slapped onto the template. What rubbish.
I look forward to revisiting the wiki site in a few days when the real artists amongst the FOSS world have had a crack of the whip, rather than these wannabes are simply submitted an attempt for the sake of it. I would be aghast to learn if any of those intial attempts took more than 15 minutes. And I would doubt it if any of the authors could even seriously say his splash screen was good enough to be part of one of the premier FOSS applications.
*unimpressed*
"Gentoo's current installation process makes it impossible to have a functioning system without knowing the following:
* How partition and disk structure works
* How GCC actually functions
* How the kernel is installed and configured
* At least something about runlevels and init scripts"
That's utter rubbish.
The partitioning / disk structure is basically a 1-time following of the Gentoo manual. You can get through it without knowing anything other than the simple fact partitions reside on a single hard disk. That's hardly knowing how it all works.
How GCC functions? Don't make me laugh. "emerge foo" does not induce an in-depth understanding of GCC. Copying the basic CFLAGS from the documentation doesn't either. I'd wager the majority of Gentoo users (bearing in mind I'm a Gentoo user who has accumulated >2600 forum posts) don't really understand GCC at all other than knowing it's a tool that compiles.
As to how the kernel is installed and configured, most people somewhat bumble through that and a little thing called 'genkernel' is making said bumbling a lot easier to do.
As for runlevels and init scripts, again it's just a case of following the docs rather than knowing what they are and how they work.
Please, do not confuse "being aware they exist" and "understanding", with the term 'knowing' implying the latter. And Gentoo is a MILLION miles away from LFS. Aside from the fact (almost) everything gets compiled and they are both Linux, there really just aren't that many similarities.
I would suggest that it's more the time taken to set up Gentoo rather than the difficulty of it (which isn't that difficult for the majority whom the docs serve well) is what provides the entry barrier. Don't get me wrong, for the willing it can be an invaluable process that does introduce them to the fundamental Linux concepts. BUT the majority of users who get through the installation process are still woefully short of the knowledge needed to maintain a healthy system and you get a lot of silly posts in the forums as a consequence. I should know, I've made a few myself.
"I have to agree with many other comments: the use of haskell eliminated it as a choice for me. I use subversion instead, and still looking for a better vcs. I checked all the available free (and some non-free) systems and all of them have major warts."
Why did it being in Haskell eliminate it as a choice? What kind of anal reason is that? Surely it's irrelevant what language anything is written in, insetad what matters is how good the program is. Or do you eliminate Haskell-based apps because you are a doting user who commits bug fixes back to projects? I doubt it.
The theory of patches is also more complex than you make it out to be. You only describe one of the simpler facets of the theory.