This is not PS2 vs. Xbox and your not 12 years olds with a emotional attachment to some piece of hardware and code..or are you??
Take a serious look at your post and tell me that it's not the exact same thing you're complaining about. You're just saying here that one OS sucks, and the other rules, and backing it up with cold hard facts like your 'feeling' that your argument is right.
Couldn't find anything on the site or google
on
Bochs 2.0 Released
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· Score: 1
I bought an ipaq a couple years back, before moving to linux. And unfourtunatly for me it's wound up forcing me to keep windows around to transfer files to and from it. Anyone know if Bochs running windows would be able to sync with my ipaq?
Have you tried dosbox? Not a viable suggestion if you're using a mac. But if you're using windows and it performs as well there as it has for me in linux it might be worth a try. So far it's run pretty much every older dos game I've thrown at it.
So when you give someone money for a service in expectation of a certain date, and then find out they knew quite well that they wouldn't be ready for half a year, we're supposed to thank them! The people who shelled out money for the windows version after the promise of a quick release of the client have every right to be annoyed about it in light of everything that's come up about how the development process has been laid out. They're a buisness like any other. If people find a service to be good, they have a right to mention that opinion to others. The same right holds true of anything negitive as well.
Should no one be allowed to mention how unhealthy Mcdonalds is because they have good prices? Should we be banned from mentioning how affordable and convient Mcdonalds is because it's unhealthy? People deserve to be able to make informed decisions about the products and services out there, and ignoring any aspect due to other factors in the company makes for a very unwise platform on which to base ones purchases.
I'm thrilled to be getting a Linux client at all, but if I think they're making a bad choice in which way to arrive there darn right I'm going to mention it. If people hadn't "whined" about it, they'd still be working on implementing Bink and Miles.
(all right, I made that up... but I'll bet it is true - maybe harmful, maybe beneficial:-)
From what I've read, continuing to solve puzzles and integrate new concepts is an extreamly important component to keeping ones mind from degrading,diseases aside, as you get older. From that perspective, I'd place programming right into the same catagory as getting a workout and eating right for me.
I'll second this. I know it's hard to plan so far ahead when there's no sure thing that any of us won't be hit by a car tomorrow, but I don't know how anyone can look at the average old person and not do everything they can to prevent that. My Grandmother has only taken a little better care of herself than most, and even that extra bit of exercise and diet planning has made a huge difference. On one side of the family I have two grandparents who can barley hear, get around, follow a conversation, or really even understand the modern world. On the other is the Grandmother I mentioned, who actually managed to tire out my 21 year old cousin jogging when she flew down there and who has a mind just as sharp as when she was at her prime.
A couple years back I took a hard look at whose lifestyle mine most mirrored, and decided very quickly to ditch the junk food, the colas, and get myself on an excercise regimine. It's a lot of work, and takes a pretty large amount of willpower at the start, but I can almost promise anyone that the results are well worth it. A couple months of increased exercise, and changing over to only eating nutritionally sound food boosted up the energy level far more than caffine ever had.
Take your bag of chips in one hand, your bottle of mountain dew in another, and jump into a hole. There, an apropriate prediction of what a lot of slashdoters eating habits will give us for an old age.
I'm a bit out of the loop, both waiting for the Linux release before buying and finding it too depressing to lurk around the bioware boards anymore.
What's the current situation with the toolkit? Have they made any official comment on a native toolkit for Linux since kylix added C++ support? Also, how well is the toolkit working under wine right now?
Or, rather than "incompetent" we can, perhaps, say "inexperienced".
I think you're right, that was a bit overly harsh of me. In retrospect I seem to recall my own learning process littered with the corpses of programs I'd wanted running on both dos and windows. Perhaps a big trial is needed to really drive in the learning experience in some cases.
Good point too in that I probaly shouldn't be condeming so harshly when even with all this trouble they're still supporting the port. A lot of companies would probaly have just let it slide into oblivian at this point.
I often find myself in Discussions wondering why Linux hasn't taken off due its good qualities.
I wondered that a lot untill I installed mandrake 9 and found not being able to copy and paste anything but the most tiny files from cd/zip was considered a minor enough problem that it didn't stop the release. mount/umount works fine to get at them still, but it's not the most intuitive thing form someone coming directly from windows.
I have to agree. The options I can see is that they were giving next to or even no attention to the multiplatform angle the entire time the game was getting all the hype, they were pushed to publication not only early but grossly early and development time all had to be channeled into what amounted to finishing the thing, or they're incompetent when it comes to multiplatform development. On the other hand, I'm sure it's also quite possible that there were things going on that we're just totally unaware of.
I'd really give a lot for a sneak peak behind the development process. I mean seriously, who develops a game for multiple platforms by writing a program then trying to port it. If the program isn't compiling at any time on a suposidly supported platform that's a very good sign that something's not going right somewhere. And they honestly expected that they'd be able to get this thing working in BeOS! What's really a shame for them is that they've lost a lot of good reputation from both the Linux and Mac community. Hardcome gamers on windows were a pretty sure sell from the start for something like this, but being an early adopter for the slowly growing number of casual gamers on both other platforms might have done them a considerable amount of good. I don't know though if in the future I at least would be able to trust any promise they made for a game, whether windows, linux, ps2 or whathaveyou at this point. Putting up a page centered around the port was a good step in repairing that, but the fact that it's become apparent that it is a port widened the gulf even more for me at least.
Re:How long news services will publish that CRAP?
on
NWN Linux Client Delayed
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I think you're taking his post the wrong way, or at least the the situation as such. Getting free promotion on a Linux related site dosn't mean only being promoted to the Linux comunity. Take Slashdot, a fairly Linux oriented site and the gist of what the poster was getting at. How many times has Neverwinter Nights gotten free promotion here, and a free plug to the many many windows users here because of it's supposed Linux support?
Some of the problems with push technology
1. Piggy-back of spam, unwanted data, etc
2. Security in general
3. Cunsumers have already made it clear they don't want it
4. Wasted bandwidth
5. Wasted time filtering out the unwanted stuff in the feed
I think it depends on what kind of game you're talking about. These days I'd agree that far more likley than not you'll find little active cross development betwean the people doing the code, character design and story in games under development from actual companies.
But I think the previous post here was instead referring to development of games simply for the love of the genre, or as shareware.In that sense I don't think it's at all uncommon to find both story and coding done by the same person. And perhaps surprisingly, I think a lot of people might even prefer games that fit into this catagory. What's lost in in having the latest whizbang graphics engine I think is made up for by being able to avoid the need to almost sneak a real rpg past the management that Leon Boyarsky mentioned in his article. Heck, I think the best example of a person doing double duty and getting good result is one that was eventually picked up by a company, ripped from the author, and turned into a big mess, Ultima.
That was one of my all time favorite games, and for just that reason. It always seemed there were three or four different ways any goal could be accomplished, and I felt that added a huge amount to the experience of building up your characters skills. You could never really know if increasing your characters ability to swim or such would be more or less important than getting them better with spells.
Does anyone know of any games recently that captured that old Ultima way of doing things? I've got a pretty long backlog of games, and only yesterday sat down to start Ultima Savage Empire. Aside from the difficulty in making out the jagged fonts, I was amazed at the beauty of the games setup. You could really tell they were trying to build a world to actually play a role in. It was a perfect marrige of the plot based Japanese style and the western freeroaming spirit. It seems the only time I ever get that feeling with a rpg anymore is when I move on to the very early years of the genre. Are they still out there, or am I just missing them and stumbling on all the games which don't want to scare people with "hardcore rpg" elements.
I think the game idea especially is good. With all the complaining about gaming and linux, I think a lot of people are of the opinion that linux has no games at all. I believe I'd have switched over far earlier if I'd been aware of some of what's out there. For people like me who only do a little gaming it seems to me linux is perfectly viable for that purpose. Even something like Ultima 7 running in exult, or some of the better dos games running in dosbox might catch the eye of the nostalgic.
In going with the idea that bright and shiny things can catch attention, my advice would be to use Keramik if you're showing KDE, and also install the Geramik gtk theme. I've always considered Keramik to be a very inviting theme for people used to XP. It's similar enough in style that they'll feel unintimidated by it, and different enough that they won't be thinking "ripoff" when it comes up. Linux still has a very bad reputation for being a scary operating system that only the extreame computer geek could comprehend. Having ones first real experience with linux instead of a command line being a nice shiny set of buttons I believe can have a big impact on getting someone into it. Plus having Keramik and Geramik both active will hide the multiple styles and give a unified appearence. In terms of functionality I like having the choice, but in terms of the 'average' end user I think most would rather remain ignorent of what's running at any one time.
I also think another thing you might want to try is showing off apt (via a frontend), or one of the apt like systems. One of the biggest impressions mandrake made on me was when I typed mp3 in the search field of rpmdrake, and it gave me a list of media players which could be installed or downloaded with just a click or two. I think something like that can be a huge help to someone not overly familier with computers, or especially with what software is available for the platform.
Realone is available for linux, but only as an alpha release hidden somewhere in the download section for real8. It still drags a bit behind in some ways compared to 8 though, which makes me very happy to see a mostly open source release of a player from real.What I think it needs most are things I think even I'd be able to handle if I got the time. A new qt or gtk gui (wxwindows would be perfect I think), playlist support, and a few other little matters. Actually being able to cut and paste into real player would be a very nice change!
As far as codec support, I'm not positive on this count but I believe it has support for real audio/video 9.
They've been pretty heavy handed both trying to get people to use the pay version of realplayer, and trying to get it as prevalent on installed systems as possible. While personally I'm not thrilled at either, it's pretty easy to have some sympathy for their reasoning. I don't know if anyone here has tried to get people to give mozilla a shot, but one of the first complaints I always got was that it started up slower than IE. The quickstart was always one of the first things they wound up doing once they decided to switch. It often takes a lot of explaining before people grasped exactly why IE started so quickly. It's just not easy to compete with components built into the operating system. Don't use a quickstart and a significant amount of the potential audience will complain because it's slower to start than programs integrated into the operating system. Do use a quickstart, and another large user base will complain. The latter at least though for the most part would be able to figure out how to turn that behavior off, so I can sympathise with their decision. Seriously now, they're trying to compete with microsoft. That's not exactly an easy endevor!
What I find very odd is all the complaints about statistic reporting. Real: We've listened to your complaints and removed the spyware for you, given you a lean player that additionally supports ogg and which allows you to create your own gui. User: I'm not listening to you because you have spyware in your product, you don't support ogg and I hate your gui!
Quite a few radio stations seem to. This american life and the next big thing in particular I listen to on a regular basis, and I'm happy to say both use only real.
That's one of the best parts of it. As far as I could tell, there's nothing intrusive in the client at least, or at least that I could see with a quick glance. Annoyingly I couldn't get it to compile anyway, but I think it has great potential to be the best media player available for windows. Mplayer pretty much has it beat on the linux front since the recent QT S3 and WM9 support means it can play every format and codec I've ever heard of. But a player that can handle even almost all formats, propritary or otherwise stands a very good chance of gaining ground with windows users.Sure winamp with the apropriate plugins can act as a cover over realplayers dlls, but it's enough of a trouble to get everything set up that I believe a lot of people would rather just have one player able to handle everything from the moment of instalation. I mentioned to a friend just how barebones the current client gui build is, and I was surprised to get an instant request to burn it for her next time she was over.
And I think that's the reason they're willing to go this route. Windows users have pretty much let out a collective shout that they're not going to put up with realplayer anymore, and this gives them a chance to regain users enough that they can sell support and server software. Though the latter is just speculation on my part.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not PS2 vs. Xbox and your not 12 years olds with a emotional attachment to some piece of hardware and code..or are you??
Take a serious look at your post and tell me that it's not the exact same thing you're complaining about. You're just saying here that one OS sucks, and the other rules, and backing it up with cold hard facts like your 'feeling' that your argument is right.
I bought an ipaq a couple years back, before moving to linux. And unfourtunatly for me it's wound up forcing me to keep windows around to transfer files to and from it. Anyone know if Bochs running windows would be able to sync with my ipaq?
Have you tried dosbox? Not a viable suggestion if you're using a mac. But if you're using windows and it performs as well there as it has for me in linux it might be worth a try. So far it's run pretty much every older dos game I've thrown at it.
Wow, as annoying as that is I have to admit it is pretty clever.
Linux, for when you want superior quicktime support. It still feels weird saying that.
So when you give someone money for a service in expectation of a certain date, and then find out they knew quite well that they wouldn't be ready for half a year, we're supposed to thank them! The people who shelled out money for the windows version after the promise of a quick release of the client have every right to be annoyed about it in light of everything that's come up about how the development process has been laid out. They're a buisness like any other. If people find a service to be good, they have a right to mention that opinion to others. The same right holds true of anything negitive as well.
Should no one be allowed to mention how unhealthy Mcdonalds is because they have good prices? Should we be banned from mentioning how affordable and convient Mcdonalds is because it's unhealthy? People deserve to be able to make informed decisions about the products and services out there, and ignoring any aspect due to other factors in the company makes for a very unwise platform on which to base ones purchases.
I'm thrilled to be getting a Linux client at all, but if I think they're making a bad choice in which way to arrive there darn right I'm going to mention it. If people hadn't "whined" about it, they'd still be working on implementing Bink and Miles.
(all right, I made that up... but I'll bet it is true - maybe harmful, maybe beneficial :-)
From what I've read, continuing to solve puzzles and integrate new concepts is an extreamly important component to keeping ones mind from degrading,diseases aside, as you get older. From that perspective, I'd place programming right into the same catagory as getting a workout and eating right for me.
I'll second this. I know it's hard to plan so far ahead when there's no sure thing that any of us won't be hit by a car tomorrow, but I don't know how anyone can look at the average old person and not do everything they can to prevent that. My Grandmother has only taken a little better care of herself than most, and even that extra bit of exercise and diet planning has made a huge difference. On one side of the family I have two grandparents who can barley hear, get around, follow a conversation, or really even understand the modern world. On the other is the Grandmother I mentioned, who actually managed to tire out my 21 year old cousin jogging when she flew down there and who has a mind just as sharp as when she was at her prime.
A couple years back I took a hard look at whose lifestyle mine most mirrored, and decided very quickly to ditch the junk food, the colas, and get myself on an excercise regimine. It's a lot of work, and takes a pretty large amount of willpower at the start, but I can almost promise anyone that the results are well worth it. A couple months of increased exercise, and changing over to only eating nutritionally sound food boosted up the energy level far more than caffine ever had.
Take your bag of chips in one hand, your bottle of mountain dew in another, and jump into a hole. There, an apropriate prediction of what a lot of slashdoters eating habits will give us for an old age.
I'm a bit out of the loop, both waiting for the Linux release before buying and finding it too depressing to lurk around the bioware boards anymore.
What's the current situation with the toolkit? Have they made any official comment on a native toolkit for Linux since kylix added C++ support? Also, how well is the toolkit working under wine right now?
Or, rather than "incompetent" we can, perhaps, say "inexperienced".
I think you're right, that was a bit overly harsh of me. In retrospect I seem to recall my own learning process littered with the corpses of programs I'd wanted running on both dos and windows. Perhaps a big trial is needed to really drive in the learning experience in some cases.
Good point too in that I probaly shouldn't be condeming so harshly when even with all this trouble they're still supporting the port. A lot of companies would probaly have just let it slide into oblivian at this point.
I often find myself in Discussions wondering why Linux hasn't taken off due its good qualities.
I wondered that a lot untill I installed mandrake 9 and found not being able to copy and paste anything but the most tiny files from cd/zip was considered a minor enough problem that it didn't stop the release. mount/umount works fine to get at them still, but it's not the most intuitive thing form someone coming directly from windows.
I have to agree. The options I can see is that they were giving next to or even no attention to the multiplatform angle the entire time the game was getting all the hype, they were pushed to publication not only early but grossly early and development time all had to be channeled into what amounted to finishing the thing, or they're incompetent when it comes to multiplatform development. On the other hand, I'm sure it's also quite possible that there were things going on that we're just totally unaware of.
I'd really give a lot for a sneak peak behind the development process. I mean seriously, who develops a game for multiple platforms by writing a program then trying to port it. If the program isn't compiling at any time on a suposidly supported platform that's a very good sign that something's not going right somewhere. And they honestly expected that they'd be able to get this thing working in BeOS! What's really a shame for them is that they've lost a lot of good reputation from both the Linux and Mac community. Hardcome gamers on windows were a pretty sure sell from the start for something like this, but being an early adopter for the slowly growing number of casual gamers on both other platforms might have done them a considerable amount of good. I don't know though if in the future I at least would be able to trust any promise they made for a game, whether windows, linux, ps2 or whathaveyou at this point. Putting up a page centered around the port was a good step in repairing that, but the fact that it's become apparent that it is a port widened the gulf even more for me at least.
I think you're taking his post the wrong way, or at least the the situation as such. Getting free promotion on a Linux related site dosn't mean only being promoted to the Linux comunity. Take Slashdot, a fairly Linux oriented site and the gist of what the poster was getting at. How many times has Neverwinter Nights gotten free promotion here, and a free plug to the many many windows users here because of it's supposed Linux support?
Some of the problems with push technology
1. Piggy-back of spam, unwanted data, etc
2. Security in general
3. Cunsumers have already made it clear they don't want it
4. Wasted bandwidth
5. Wasted time filtering out the unwanted stuff in the feed
6. Grandma
7. Stairs
Or Red dward! C'mon, Red Dwarf! I've quite often always considered it to be better sci-fi than trek.
I think it depends on what kind of game you're talking about. These days I'd agree that far more likley than not you'll find little active cross development betwean the people doing the code, character design and story in games under development from actual companies.
But I think the previous post here was instead referring to development of games simply for the love of the genre, or as shareware.In that sense I don't think it's at all uncommon to find both story and coding done by the same person. And perhaps surprisingly, I think a lot of people might even prefer games that fit into this catagory. What's lost in in having the latest whizbang graphics engine I think is made up for by being able to avoid the need to almost sneak a real rpg past the management that Leon Boyarsky mentioned in his article. Heck, I think the best example of a person doing double duty and getting good result is one that was eventually picked up by a company, ripped from the author, and turned into a big mess, Ultima.
That was one of my all time favorite games, and for just that reason. It always seemed there were three or four different ways any goal could be accomplished, and I felt that added a huge amount to the experience of building up your characters skills. You could never really know if increasing your characters ability to swim or such would be more or less important than getting them better with spells.
Does anyone know of any games recently that captured that old Ultima way of doing things? I've got a pretty long backlog of games, and only yesterday sat down to start Ultima Savage Empire. Aside from the difficulty in making out the jagged fonts, I was amazed at the beauty of the games setup. You could really tell they were trying to build a world to actually play a role in. It was a perfect marrige of the plot based Japanese style and the western freeroaming spirit. It seems the only time I ever get that feeling with a rpg anymore is when I move on to the very early years of the genre. Are they still out there, or am I just missing them and stumbling on all the games which don't want to scare people with "hardcore rpg" elements.
I think the game idea especially is good. With all the complaining about gaming and linux, I think a lot of people are of the opinion that linux has no games at all. I believe I'd have switched over far earlier if I'd been aware of some of what's out there. For people like me who only do a little gaming it seems to me linux is perfectly viable for that purpose. Even something like Ultima 7 running in exult, or some of the better dos games running in dosbox might catch the eye of the nostalgic.
In going with the idea that bright and shiny things can catch attention, my advice would be to use Keramik if you're showing KDE, and also install the Geramik gtk theme. I've always considered Keramik to be a very inviting theme for people used to XP. It's similar enough in style that they'll feel unintimidated by it, and different enough that they won't be thinking "ripoff" when it comes up. Linux still has a very bad reputation for being a scary operating system that only the extreame computer geek could comprehend. Having ones first real experience with linux instead of a command line being a nice shiny set of buttons I believe can have a big impact on getting someone into it. Plus having Keramik and Geramik both active will hide the multiple styles and give a unified appearence. In terms of functionality I like having the choice, but in terms of the 'average' end user I think most would rather remain ignorent of what's running at any one time.
I also think another thing you might want to try is showing off apt (via a frontend), or one of the apt like systems. One of the biggest impressions mandrake made on me was when I typed mp3 in the search field of rpmdrake, and it gave me a list of media players which could be installed or downloaded with just a click or two. I think something like that can be a huge help to someone not overly familier with computers, or especially with what software is available for the platform.
Realone is available for linux, but only as an alpha release hidden somewhere in the download section for real8. It still drags a bit behind in some ways compared to 8 though, which makes me very happy to see a mostly open source release of a player from real.What I think it needs most are things I think even I'd be able to handle if I got the time. A new qt or gtk gui (wxwindows would be perfect I think), playlist support, and a few other little matters. Actually being able to cut and paste into real player would be a very nice change!
As far as codec support, I'm not positive on this count but I believe it has support for real audio/video 9.
They've been pretty heavy handed both trying to get people to use the pay version of realplayer, and trying to get it as prevalent on installed systems as possible. While personally I'm not thrilled at either, it's pretty easy to have some sympathy for their reasoning. I don't know if anyone here has tried to get people to give mozilla a shot, but one of the first complaints I always got was that it started up slower than IE. The quickstart was always one of the first things they wound up doing once they decided to switch. It often takes a lot of explaining before people grasped exactly why IE started so quickly. It's just not easy to compete with components built into the operating system. Don't use a quickstart and a significant amount of the potential audience will complain because it's slower to start than programs integrated into the operating system. Do use a quickstart, and another large user base will complain. The latter at least though for the most part would be able to figure out how to turn that behavior off, so I can sympathise with their decision. Seriously now, they're trying to compete with microsoft. That's not exactly an easy endevor!
What I find very odd is all the complaints about statistic reporting.
Real: We've listened to your complaints and removed the spyware for you, given you a lean player that additionally supports ogg and which allows you to create your own gui.
User: I'm not listening to you because you have spyware in your product, you don't support ogg and I hate your gui!
Yes, but does anyone use real format anymore?
Quite a few radio stations seem to. This american life and the next big thing in particular I listen to on a regular basis, and I'm happy to say both use only real.
That's one of the best parts of it. As far as I could tell, there's nothing intrusive in the client at least, or at least that I could see with a quick glance. Annoyingly I couldn't get it to compile anyway, but I think it has great potential to be the best media player available for windows. Mplayer pretty much has it beat on the linux front since the recent QT S3 and WM9 support means it can play every format and codec I've ever heard of. But a player that can handle even almost all formats, propritary or otherwise stands a very good chance of gaining ground with windows users.Sure winamp with the apropriate plugins can act as a cover over realplayers dlls, but it's enough of a trouble to get everything set up that I believe a lot of people would rather just have one player able to handle everything from the moment of instalation. I mentioned to a friend just how barebones the current client gui build is, and I was surprised to get an instant request to burn it for her next time she was over.
And I think that's the reason they're willing to go this route. Windows users have pretty much let out a collective shout that they're not going to put up with realplayer anymore, and this gives them a chance to regain users enough that they can sell support and server software. Though the latter is just speculation on my part.