Who gives a flying whatever about how Free it is? These awards are about the quality of the game, nothing else. Look, I'm an avid Linux user, but this kind of zealotry annoys the hell out of me (it's no wonder us Linux users get branded as nerds with posts like this). Wesnoth is an OK game, but it hardly breaks any boundaries does it?
Only number 7? I've enjoyed this more than any other game I've bought in 3 or 4 years including the real biggies such as HL2, Doom 3 etc etc. Yeah it could be longer - but there are mods and rumours of a multiplayer coming soon.
This game is sadly overlooked, and although independent it blows away the competition in terms of gameplay. And yes, I have the boxed version, even though Valve took pity on the devs and released it over Steam to give it a US audience.
That's because although the UK is officially a Christian country, there are many more practicing Muslims here than Christians. Loads of old churches have been turned into other things as their congregation died off from old age. For example in my home city I can think of 3 examples of this off the top of my head:-
Norwich Arts Centre - a music venue - I've seen Nirvana and Oasis there for example - once a church
Cinama city - now a cinema - once a church
St Andrew's Hall - hosts the Norwich Beer Festival amongst other things - once a church
Note, I do not necessarily see this as a bad thing since it stops Tony Blair from having to bow to the pressure of the "God Squad", unlike some other world leaders...
I've said it before and I'll say it again - the problem is not the software infringing on patents, it's the fact that software can be patented at all.
All of this software is legal outside of the US, whether there are US patents held on it or not. It is the US patent system that is at fault here, not the software vendors.
The US needs to get its act together, or it will find itself falling behind in homegrown new technology as all the innovative companies move (or stay) overseas.
I was under the impression (from over here in the UK) that the rating on a game means that no-one under a certain age should be sold it. The article suggests that such a thing is against the First Amendment, WTF?
Over here in the UK, games are rated in the same way that movies, alcohol, tobacco etc are in that if you are caught supplying them to anyone underage you can get prosecuted.
I'm against censorship in that an adult should not be censored from what they wish to see/do, but ratings are a good thing IMO. This kind of court decision just seems back-asswards to me. Does this ruling mean that a child can go to an adult rated film, and if they get denied entry claim it breaches their First Amendment rights?
Red Hat and Fedora are not as popular in Europe as they are in the US. Here Mandr(ake|iva)/(Open) SuSE are the distros of choice for professional users. I've never personally met anyone who uses Red Hat or Fedora for example, and I know a lot of Linux users.
I suspect, therefore, that the survey included respondants from countries other than the US.
A mom-and-pop store or a private individual cannot reasonable be expected to do a good faith patent search when choosing an operating system (MS Windows and Mac OS undoubtedly violate hundreds of software patents, and Linux violates thousands of patents if you include software commonly found in distros, like mp3 players - the mplayer project alone has close to 1,000 known patent violations and countless unknown violations). Legally every single user of a halfway modern OS should have injunctions granted against the use of their computer and massive damages be paid out to the dozens or hundreds of patent holders covering some aspect of their OS.
MPlayer, Linux, LAME etc etc, are perfectly legal here in the UK since software patents are not enforcable. The problem is not with the software, it's with the US patent system.
I don't license my stuff with the GPL. I use the Apache license, and there's nothing preventing Apache licensed stuff ending up in a Linux distribution.
I'm with you, and if I held any copyright/licensing power over anything in RedHawk Linux, I'd be withdrawing Lockheed's license to use it in the same way that Fyodor revoked SCO's license for NMap.
So you're a programmer using a language that you percieve to be going out of fashion and therefore feel threatened by what's new and current and respond by churning out these "facts" to anyone who may listen.
1)Java developers trying to pull the wool over their management's eyes to continue being paid outrageous salaries for working with a flawed language at the wrong abstraction level.
So you're a wage slave who's been hacking away in their chosen language for years and is jealous of the success of others and the fact that your career seems to be passing you by.
2)People who's last and ONLY experience has been "Java"
You may as well admit it, you've never programmed in Java (or any other next-generation language for that matter) have you?
3)Immature college weenies whose idea of a regexp match is a for-next loop stepping through each character of a string.
So you've been in your career for probably about 10-15 years but haven't kept up with the times, so you have to resort to mocking others who have more knowledge than you of the latest technologies.
Azureus has a horribly slow UI and takes 10s+ to start on high-end hardware.
Rubbish. It starts in 5 seconds on my Thinkpad with a 1.5Ghz processor. That's not that high end nowadays.
Anyway, who in the hell cares about start up time? What does it matter if OOo starts up slower than Word? It preforms perfectly OK when it's running. Do the people who complain about this sort of thing have some kind of ADD where they forget what their doing if an app isn't in front of them in microseconds?
Okay, please show me these instances of where the Java version of an app is faster than the C version.
No. And I'll tell you why. I just don't care. If an app works in the way I require it's a good app. If it doesn't, it's not.
I'm actually trying to argue against this idea that one language is better than another. If something takes 1 second longer to start when written in one language than another, or 5 seconds longer when doing some processing I don't give a shit. The only people who'd notice the difference are people who spend their entire waking life glued to a computer monitor looking for evidence that their favourite language is "better" than another.
I made no mention of memory usage - I was pointing out using top that the applications are using less CPU than artsd. Besides I've got 2Gb of RAM in this machine. 81Mb barely registers as a blip.
Or he might be a normal non-evangelical java junkie that runs it out of the box. Like me.
And me, I'm running a vanilla Java 5 VM with no tweaking.
It runs like shit on my sytems too, and everyone else I know that runs it.. runs like shit. Of course they're not going to tweak the VM, the applications or run around in a handful of config files or whatever else you've done to manage to get it to perform reasonably.
I've done no tweaking whatsoever. Just installed the applications and then run them.
notice, I was able to state my opinion without backing it up with a bunch of useless output from a console. (which mind you is dubious in that I'm sure you can use vi. You're the kind of person that loves vi right?)
Even with 512MB of RAM, Azureus (the hugely popular Java-based BitTorrent client) takes forever to start up, responds sluggishly to user input, and sucks down so much RAM that the Windows PC it's running on is nearly useless for any other task.
One word. Bollocks. I have Azureus running right now. As well as NetBeans, OC4J, VMWare and whole host of other things. Either you don't know one end of a computer from another or you're deliberately spreading FUD.
Exactly. In real life I found that there are 3 types of people who perpetuate the myth that Java is slow:-
1).NET developers
2) People who's last experience of Java was rollover applets in 1996 and who have refused to install a JVM since
3) Crusty old Unix hackers with beards and rainbow jumpers for whom Window Managers are eye candy and whose idea of a IDE is vi
Yes, but the "right" staff won't be expensive. Just that if you have the "wrong" staff it's because you're cutting costs too much.
In your original post you imply that deploying Linux will cost you more in staff costs. That is not true. The reality is that yes, you're more likely to be able to hire an inexperienced MSCE cheaper, however a decent Windows admin will cost the same as a decent Unix admin.
I had an interesting phone call with Microsoft the other week. My laptop came with Win XP Pro pre-installed. I'd activated it since I had a contract where I needed it.
I decided to wipe it off, install SuSE Linux, and run Win XP in VMWare. All my work is Linux based at the moment. Of course it wouldn't activate as the "hardware" had changed so I called Microsoft and ended up at an Indian call centre.
Paraphrasing...
Me : I'd like to re-Activate Windows
Her : You're using an OEM version of Windows, you cannot put it on another machine
Me : It *IS* on the same machine, it's just running inside VMWare at the moment
Her : What's VMWare?
Me : It's a virtual machine that's running on the same laptop that Windows was pre-installed on
Her : I don't understand. You sound like you're telling the truth. Here's your activation key.
Of course, the actual conversation went on a lot longer and was a lot more frustrating, but I got there in the end. Basically the person at the other end had no idea what I was talking about, so gave me the key because I sounded trustworthy.
I didn't think there was such a beast. Motif went out with the Ark. That there says everything about the quality of Citrix software. Some flavour of VMWare is surely a better option?
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Who gives a flying whatever about how Free it is? These awards are about the quality of the game, nothing else. Look, I'm an avid Linux user, but this kind of zealotry annoys the hell out of me (it's no wonder us Linux users get branded as nerds with posts like this). Wesnoth is an OK game, but it hardly breaks any boundaries does it?
Bob
Only number 7? I've enjoyed this more than any other game I've bought in 3 or 4 years including the real biggies such as HL2, Doom 3 etc etc. Yeah it could be longer - but there are mods and rumours of a multiplayer coming soon.
This game is sadly overlooked, and although independent it blows away the competition in terms of gameplay. And yes, I have the boxed version, even though Valve took pity on the devs and released it over Steam to give it a US audience.
Bob
Note, I do not necessarily see this as a bad thing since it stops Tony Blair from having to bow to the pressure of the "God Squad", unlike some other world leaders...
Bob
Then change banks and tell them why. I did, and so did my mother (who also uses Linux now with Firefox).
I've heard since that the bank we both belonged to now supports Firefox - I wonder how many others did the same...
Bob
I've said it before and I'll say it again - the problem is not the software infringing on patents, it's the fact that software can be patented at all.
All of this software is legal outside of the US, whether there are US patents held on it or not. It is the US patent system that is at fault here, not the software vendors.
The US needs to get its act together, or it will find itself falling behind in homegrown new technology as all the innovative companies move (or stay) overseas.
Bob
I was under the impression (from over here in the UK) that the rating on a game means that no-one under a certain age should be sold it. The article suggests that such a thing is against the First Amendment, WTF?
Over here in the UK, games are rated in the same way that movies, alcohol, tobacco etc are in that if you are caught supplying them to anyone underage you can get prosecuted.
I'm against censorship in that an adult should not be censored from what they wish to see/do, but ratings are a good thing IMO. This kind of court decision just seems back-asswards to me. Does this ruling mean that a child can go to an adult rated film, and if they get denied entry claim it breaches their First Amendment rights?
Bob
Red Hat and Fedora are not as popular in Europe as they are in the US. Here Mandr(ake|iva)/(Open) SuSE are the distros of choice for professional users. I've never personally met anyone who uses Red Hat or Fedora for example, and I know a lot of Linux users.
I suspect, therefore, that the survey included respondants from countries other than the US.
Bob
You should have bought one and then joined in the class action lawsuit later.
Bob
A mom-and-pop store or a private individual cannot reasonable be expected to do a good faith patent search when choosing an operating system (MS Windows and Mac OS undoubtedly violate hundreds of software patents, and Linux violates thousands of patents if you include software commonly found in distros, like mp3 players - the mplayer project alone has close to 1,000 known patent violations and countless unknown violations). Legally every single user of a halfway modern OS should have injunctions granted against the use of their computer and massive damages be paid out to the dozens or hundreds of patent holders covering some aspect of their OS.
MPlayer, Linux, LAME etc etc, are perfectly legal here in the UK since software patents are not enforcable. The problem is not with the software, it's with the US patent system.
Bob
I don't license my stuff with the GPL. I use the Apache license, and there's nothing preventing Apache licensed stuff ending up in a Linux distribution.
Bob
I'm with you, and if I held any copyright/licensing power over anything in RedHawk Linux, I'd be withdrawing Lockheed's license to use it in the same way that Fyodor revoked SCO's license for NMap.
Bob
I see you came in well down the field in the brain race. You may find the site here more suitable for your intellectual level.
Bob
#1, don't you have some slide presentations to makeup for your boss or something?
I am the boss, as well as lead developer. I run my own software company.
Bob
Oops. Non of the above
Let me guess your profile then...
and yet JAVA IS STILL SLOW.
So you're a programmer using a language that you percieve to be going out of fashion and therefore feel threatened by what's new and current and respond by churning out these "facts" to anyone who may listen.
1)Java developers trying to pull the wool over their management's eyes to continue being paid outrageous salaries for working with a flawed language at the wrong abstraction level.
So you're a wage slave who's been hacking away in their chosen language for years and is jealous of the success of others and the fact that your career seems to be passing you by.
2)People who's last and ONLY experience has been "Java"
You may as well admit it, you've never programmed in Java (or any other next-generation language for that matter) have you?
3)Immature college weenies whose idea of a regexp match is a for-next loop stepping through each character of a string.
So you've been in your career for probably about 10-15 years but haven't kept up with the times, so you have to resort to mocking others who have more knowledge than you of the latest technologies.
Bob
Azureus has a horribly slow UI and takes 10s+ to start on high-end hardware.
Rubbish. It starts in 5 seconds on my Thinkpad with a 1.5Ghz processor. That's not that high end nowadays.
Anyway, who in the hell cares about start up time? What does it matter if OOo starts up slower than Word? It preforms perfectly OK when it's running. Do the people who complain about this sort of thing have some kind of ADD where they forget what their doing if an app isn't in front of them in microseconds?
Bob
Okay, please show me these instances of where the Java version of an app is faster than the C version.
No. And I'll tell you why. I just don't care. If an app works in the way I require it's a good app. If it doesn't, it's not.
I'm actually trying to argue against this idea that one language is better than another. If something takes 1 second longer to start when written in one language than another, or 5 seconds longer when doing some processing I don't give a shit. The only people who'd notice the difference are people who spend their entire waking life glued to a computer monitor looking for evidence that their favourite language is "better" than another.
Bob
I made no mention of memory usage - I was pointing out using top that the applications are using less CPU than artsd. Besides I've got 2Gb of RAM in this machine. 81Mb barely registers as a blip.
Bob
Or he might be a normal non-evangelical java junkie that runs it out of the box. Like me.
And me, I'm running a vanilla Java 5 VM with no tweaking.
It runs like shit on my sytems too, and everyone else I know that runs it.. runs like shit. Of course they're not going to tweak the VM, the applications or run around in a handful of config files or whatever else you've done to manage to get it to perform reasonably.
I've done no tweaking whatsoever. Just installed the applications and then run them.
notice, I was able to state my opinion without backing it up with a bunch of useless output from a console. (which mind you is dubious in that I'm sure you can use vi. You're the kind of person that loves vi right?)
Translation - you can't back up your statements.
Bob
Even with 512MB of RAM, Azureus (the hugely popular Java-based BitTorrent client) takes forever to start up, responds sluggishly to user input, and sucks down so much RAM that the Windows PC it's running on is nearly useless for any other task.
/bin/sh /usr/local/netbeans36/bin/runide.sh /usr/local/jdk1.5.0_03/bin/java -Djdk.home=/usr/local/jdk1.5.0_03 -classpath /usr/local/netbeans36/lib/ext/boot.jar:/usr/local/ jdk1.5.0_03/lib/dt.jar:/usr/local/jdk1.5.0_03/lib/ htmlconverter.jar:/usr/local/jdk1.5.0_03/lib/jcons ole.jar:/usr/local/jdk1.5.0_03/lib/sa-jdi.jar:/usr /local/jdk1.5.0_03/lib/tools.jar -Dnetbeans.osenv=/tmp/nbenv.8616 -Dnetbeans.osenv.nullsep=true -Dnetbeans.home=/usr/local/netbeans36 -Djava.security.policy=/usr/local/netbeans36/bin/i de.policy -Xms24m -Xmx96m -Xverify:none org.netbeans.Main --userdir /home/mparker/.netbeans/3.6 /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware /usr/lib/vmware/bin/vmware-vmx -@ pipe=/tmp/vmware-mparker/vmx4380c2c9c1cd53db;vm=43 80c2c9c1cd53db /home/mparker/VMWare/Windows XP Professional/Windows XP Professional.vmx /bin/bash /usr/local/azureus/azureus /usr/local/jdk1.5.0_03/bin/java -Xms16m -Xmx128m -cp /usr/local/azureus//Azureus2.jar:/usr/local/azureu s//swt.jar:/usr/local/azureus//swt-mozilla.jar:/us r/local/azureus//swt-pi.jar -Djava.library.path=/usr/local/azureus/ -Dazureus.install.path=/usr/local/azureus/ org.gudy.azureus2.ui.swt.Main
One word. Bollocks. I have Azureus running right now. As well as NetBeans, OC4J, VMWare and whole host of other things. Either you don't know one end of a computer from another or you're deliberately spreading FUD.
Bob
top - 14:51:58 up 5:33, 6 users, load average: 0.18, 0.17, 0.51
Tasks: 116 total, 2 running, 114 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 2.7% us, 1.0% sy, 0.0% ni, 91.3% id, 4.0% wa, 0.7% hi, 0.3% si
Mem: 2076528k total, 1662764k used, 413764k free, 67972k buffers
Swap: 4088500k total, 463460k used, 3625040k free, 1072344k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
8540 mparker -51 0 30176 15m 14m S 3.0 0.8 3:32.12 artsd
7774 mparker 16 0 38724 1032 512 S 0.3 0.0 0:00.92 ocssd.bin
14289 mparker 16 0 2056 992 752 R 0.3 0.0 0:00.04 top
1 root 16 0 680 60 36 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.00 init
2 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
3 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.18 events/0
4 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
9 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthread
19 root 20 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
142 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.76 kblockd/0
185 root 12 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0
184 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:07.55 kswapd0
778 root 15 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kseriod
1014 root 11 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ata/0
1020 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_0
1021 root 21 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_1
1248 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.57 reiserfs/0
mparker 8616 7989 0 09:51 ? 00:00:00
mparker 8635 8616 0 09:51 ? 00:01:31
mparker 11799 7989 0 12:44 ? 00:00:05
mparker 11810 11799 0 12:44 ? 00:01:16
mparker 11868 7989 0 12:55 ? 00:00:00
mparker 11873 11868 1 12:55 ? 00:01:38
mparker 13824 10435 1 14:31 pts/2 00:00:19 java -jar oc4j.jar
ps output abridged to avoid lameness filter.
Exactly. In real life I found that there are 3 types of people who perpetuate the myth that Java is slow:-
.NET developers
1)
2) People who's last experience of Java was rollover applets in 1996 and who have refused to install a JVM since
3) Crusty old Unix hackers with beards and rainbow jumpers for whom Window Managers are eye candy and whose idea of a IDE is vi
Bob
La, la, la, I can't hear you...
Bob
Yes, but the "right" staff won't be expensive. Just that if you have the "wrong" staff it's because you're cutting costs too much.
In your original post you imply that deploying Linux will cost you more in staff costs. That is not true. The reality is that yes, you're more likely to be able to hire an inexperienced MSCE cheaper, however a decent Windows admin will cost the same as a decent Unix admin.
Bob
I had an interesting phone call with Microsoft the other week. My laptop came with Win XP Pro pre-installed. I'd activated it since I had a contract where I needed it.
I decided to wipe it off, install SuSE Linux, and run Win XP in VMWare. All my work is Linux based at the moment. Of course it wouldn't activate as the "hardware" had changed so I called Microsoft and ended up at an Indian call centre.
Paraphrasing...
Me : I'd like to re-Activate Windows
Her : You're using an OEM version of Windows, you cannot put it on another machine
Me : It *IS* on the same machine, it's just running inside VMWare at the moment
Her : What's VMWare?
Me : It's a virtual machine that's running on the same laptop that Windows was pre-installed on
Her : I don't understand. You sound like you're telling the truth. Here's your activation key.
Of course, the actual conversation went on a lot longer and was a lot more frustrating, but I got there in the end. Basically the person at the other end had no idea what I was talking about, so gave me the key because I sounded trustworthy.
Bob
Any up-front cost savings are typically offset by higher implementation and staffing costs.
Only if you have the wrong staff.
Bob
installing the latest openmotif
I didn't think there was such a beast. Motif went out with the Ark. That there says everything about the quality of Citrix software. Some flavour of VMWare is surely a better option?
Bob