Do you believe that all Linux distributions should use such a friendly series of dialog boxes in order to attract more users to Linux?
I think that it is vital that we keep the FUD about Linux being difficult to configure and setup true. I mean, why make it easier for end users, if they aren't geeks and contributing to the OS community, do we care?
Wizards are for weenies... That is why evil Bill uses them so heavily, its not to make it easier for people to use his software... Its to limit feature creep... If you can guide the user right down the hall and not have him looking into each office along the way, you can reduce testing costs, less security etc.
Damn, I hope Linux will start having more Wizards... It saves so much time and gives users a feeling of satisfaction and confidence... and with the Cancel button always there, a way to back out should they become concerned.
What a dumb question to ask... Should we make software easier to use..
Well now the PC has a case even the "smarter" Mac users can purchase... Afterall, how many of us know someone who bought a Mac because it looked perritty (pretty)...
Let's face it... Some of Apples successes is because their cases appeal to the artistic side of the brain... Helping to overpower the logical side that would have definitely said by PC...
Without the Mac user segment out there, we wouldn't have all those cool multi-color, fancy, visually charged Car Steros, Stereo components, and Windows XP...
Twelve Monkeys remains the only time travel film since the original "Time Machine" that even attempts to be self-consistant, and does it well.
Actually no it doesn't. If Bruce Willis is part of the problem in the future (which is intervention causes because he screwed up), then how the hell did he get there in the first place.
That movie so sucked and Brad Pitt's performance left me wanting to beat him to a pulp.
Not to start a flamewar... But have you looked at the most popular Japanese games?
Street Fighter (and the infinite variants) can hardly be good for one's brain.
My high school put Street Fighter in the library as a fundraiser... They yanked it because the library became very empty, that and the fact that people wouldn't leave their games when the fire alarm went, would skip class, and was actually against the city's by-law.
I still believe it was the library and the sudden drop in marks of some students who were usually excellent students...
I'm not trolling... There are just days that I thank God that Microsoft is in charge then this guy.
He may innovate on interface and have some minor hardware achivements, but overall, Apple has only moved ahead as Microsoft caught up. Without MS there wouldn't be anything worthwile from Apple.
Everyone says look how stable the Apple OS is, of course, it only achived that by dropping all their old code and building upon BeOS.
Now he blacklists the very people who love him dearest. Images of abused housewives coming back for another beating fill my head... Here's some advice.. The jackass isn't worth it... Walk away!
Troll me if you want... But Steve's action speak for themselves, this guy has a fear of being insignificance...
Way to go Apple, shoot yourself in the foot again... Next time aim closer and blow it off.
Better still... Here is the article... Thus no deep linking issue at all.
Game programmers survive the Storm
Former ION studio executives to teach classes at UTD 07/06/2002
By VICTOR GODINEZ / The Dallas Morning News
The spectacular rise and fiery crash of Dallas-based computer game development studio ION Storm were landmark events in the game industry.
Now, the two men who piloted ION Storm, John Romero and Tom Hall, have resurfaced in the most unlikely of jobs: college professors.
Starting in the fall semester, Mr. Romero, 34, and Mr. Hall, 37, will be instructing computer science majors at the University of Texas at Dallas on the finer points of game programming and design.
"We're really excited to teach because we love to teach what we know, and this is the perfect place to do it," Mr. Romero said.
During ION's brief reign atop the gaming world, Mr. Romero almost single-handedly transformed the image of the nerdy game programmer, and he was known as much for his long hair, fast cars and reportedly standoffish attitude as he was for his programming flair.
On a recent afternoon on the UTD campus, Mr. Romero seemed jovial and comfortable as he and Mr. Hall talked about life after ION and their ventures into academia. Mr. Romero's rock star mane of hair was gone, replaced by a more conservative coiffure and slight stubble.
The UTD campus is a short drive from the Dallas penthouse suite in the Chase Tower where the two worked from 1996 to 2001.
But it's light-years away from the rarified air of the multibillion dollar computer game industry that Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall pioneered and rode to fame.
ION Storm was created in 1996, largely on the reputation of Mr. Romero, who helped found id Software in Mesquite, the computer game development firm responsible for mega-hits Doom and Quake.
At ION, Mr. Romero, Mr. Hall and more than 20 other programmers toiled on a game called Daikatana, which was supposed to revolutionize the world of computer games and compete with id's best offerings.
Instead, Daikatana was plagued by delays, internal disagreements documented in the industry press and disputes with publisher and financial backer Eidos, which poured millions of dollars into ION.
When Daikatana finally hit store shelves in April of 2000, it was panned by reviewers.
ION Storm did release one more game, Anachronox, that was well received critically, but the writing was already on the wall and the Dallas office shut down last year, imploding under the weight of its own publicity for Daikatana.
An ION Storm office in Austin did survive the Dallas closure, and released the blockbuster title Deus Ex, but neither Mr. Romero nor Mr. Hall were involved with the Austin location.
Scaling back
Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall did create a small game company shortly after leaving ION Storm called Monkeystone Games.
But Monkeystone's focus is on games for handheld computers, cellphones and portable consoles like Nintendo's GameBoy Advance.
"It's a very big attempt at not taking three to four years to make a game and to get something done really fast and actually get more back into
what we like to do," Mr. Romero said. "At ION we were mainly working in management, managing people, but not able to do what we really wanted to do, and we were kind of torn between it."
"ION was just too big, and now we're back to a nice, small company where we can actually do hands-on work on everything," he added.
Mr. Hall says that while Monkeystone isn't focusing on the big-budget computer game market, that doesn't mean he and Mr. Romero have thrown in the towel.
"Handheld devices are emerging and diverging and swirling around as the exciting new place to be," he said. "Everybody has cellphones and PDAs."
Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall say that working at Monkeystone is less time-consuming than ION Storm, giving them the time to embark on outside projects, such as their courses at UTD.
Learning curve
While Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall will each only be teaching one class next semester, they both say they're already drafting syllabi.
"The overall class for programming is going to be designing a game engine, and all the components that go into the game engine; the networking, the drawing subsystem, the input system, all the major components," Mr. Romero said.
Then students will learn to paste graphics on to the frame they've built and create a small game.
Mr. Hall said he's going to focus more on the design side.
"My class is more studying the whys and wherefores of game design, what you actually do, how you reward the players, the elements that make games fun," he said. "There are a lot of things that you learn, painfully, by experience that I guess these people will get a shortcut to."
"It's kind of fun to step back and analyze your craft and maybe learn some things as well," he added.
Mr. Romero said he hopes to eventually create an entire degree program at UTD in game development and design.
"If it turns out pretty good, we can maybe talk to some of our friends that are here in Dallas that are working at game companies to maybe help out with some new classes, maybe set up some kind of a degree," he said.
"There are a lot of game degrees that are popping up all over the place," Mr. Romero said. "I actually talked to a person at Collin County Community College back when we started ION Storm about doing a degree. But since we had just started ION, we had no time to do that."
Mr. Romero said he and Mr. Hall will probably sprinkle some of the business insights they learned over the years into their classes, but he said they'll mostly stay away from formal instruction on how to create and run a game development company.
"We're not doing a business class, because that's an entire class on its own," Mr. Romero said.
"A business class will knock all the illusions out of their head," Mr. Hall added with a wry grin.
while ignoring *serious* news like the cure for 1/3 of cancers in mice
Hey moderators!!!! Wake up, what do you think will kill us geeks off... Cancer... Monitors, cellphones, wireless all give off radiation, some to lesser degrees, but all contribute to the problem.
Cancer is very relevant, as right now I have a lead belt over my boys to protect them:)
I think what we need is an Open Source Appreciation day. People get burned out for several reasons, but the biggest has to be lack of appreciation and recognition.
Granted not ever OS developer craves attention, and some don't even desire it, but deep down its always welcome.
I'm not an OS developer, but being self-employeed, its sometimes hard to get motivated, other times its very easy.
8. Acknowledge their work. A once-a-year banquet ain't gonna do it. Each individual volunteer needs to hear from you regarding what impact their donation of time and talent is accomplishing.
Wait until Walmart puts in a DVD player and an open source DVD Player based off of the DeCSS code.
2600's association with hackers, phreakers, and crackers, etc, did not make it easy for them to appear as angels. Though the law shouldn't be biased, it is hard not to be, especially when you don't understand the jargon.
Of course, its getting to the point that judges that do not become technically proficient SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM THE BENCH. If many judges still held racist views, would they be tolerated? I think not.
Judges must become technically knowledgable. Greater effort must be spent on educating judges about technology.
Explaining technology to someone who doesn't understand it is essential.
Wouldn't I owe them 0.014 cents per song per transfer? Even the most aggressive super node couldn't be possibly pushing out more then 1,000 songs a day.. $14 x the amount of days the RIAA has you in their sites...
We need P2P software to be designed as streamers, that way we can only be tacked at a very low rate.
The biggest question is, what are the issues of not owning the material being streamed? Do you need to own it to stream it since you are paying an ownership fee, or is that fee an entitlement to stream?
I'll bite.
Some of the best songs that I like the most do not make it to the radio. This includes any of the slower songs (as those types are reserved for Celine Dion, Maria, Madonna, etc.).
CDs really suffer because I can download a song in 10 minutes vs. 8 hours.
The movie industry is safe for a little while longer since their content is so bloody large.
Didn't they do this in Afganistan with their repressive religous practices?
Didn't Rome do this with Games and Gladiators?
Didn't Nazi Germany do similar?
Notice the common theme, these regimes all fell!
If you are itching to take America down, by all means continue with the moral decay that has been cloaked by capitalism, democracy, and acceptance (rather then tolerance)?
As a side note, who says that after these 3 morons and criminals that watching you in the pit next wouldn't be more entertaining.
I also don't think a geek wielding a baseball bat would take out these guys... Thanks for coming out.
I saw no reference of being able to kill anyone. Did I read the same article? (yes I read the article)
What I did read was about very dishonest business practices, fraud, potentially mail fraud if invoices were mailed, threats, etc.
I read an article about some muscle heads that probably used lots of steriods and who suffered from the effects of that drug.
I read about the need for the FBI / local police to open an investigation and put these bastards in jail, sure they ripped off other dot-coms, but the moral decay in corporate America must be stemmed.
I read about why we are headed for a depression because of the complete dishonesty that exists in the stock market / CEOs / Boards and how investors should stop putting money into the markets, cause their collapse and force the government to act and put these people in jail.
Slashdot Mirror
So are you a giver or a taker? Speak up you homo!
SOB... They just screwed an entire industry...
I think that it is vital that we keep the FUD about Linux being difficult to configure and setup true. I mean, why make it easier for end users, if they aren't geeks and contributing to the OS community, do we care?
Wizards are for weenies... That is why evil Bill uses them so heavily, its not to make it easier for people to use his software... Its to limit feature creep... If you can guide the user right down the hall and not have him looking into each office along the way, you can reduce testing costs, less security etc.
Damn, I hope Linux will start having more Wizards... It saves so much time and gives users a feeling of satisfaction and confidence... and with the Cancel button always there, a way to back out should they become concerned.
What a dumb question to ask... Should we make software easier to use..
Yes!!!!!!!!
Let's face it... Some of Apples successes is because their cases appeal to the artistic side of the brain... Helping to overpower the logical side that would have definitely said by PC...
Without the Mac user segment out there, we wouldn't have all those cool multi-color, fancy, visually charged Car Steros, Stereo components, and Windows XP...
I swear this site is full of Mac Zealots...
I miss by weekly Linux Kernel update... Those stories and the dicsussion really added to the excitment surrounding Linux...
Actually, can we get meaningful and interesting stories here... The last two days have really sucked.
I ain't trolling... Just tired of UnitedLinux, wait until they accomplish something rather then just talking...
Actually no it doesn't. If Bruce Willis is part of the problem in the future (which is intervention causes because he screwed up), then how the hell did he get there in the first place.
That movie so sucked and Brad Pitt's performance left me wanting to beat him to a pulp.
Street Fighter (and the infinite variants) can hardly be good for one's brain.
My high school put Street Fighter in the library as a fundraiser... They yanked it because the library became very empty, that and the fact that people wouldn't leave their games when the fire alarm went, would skip class, and was actually against the city's by-law.
I still believe it was the library and the sudden drop in marks of some students who were usually excellent students...
Even if they were to go over budget, be not as good as the original, etc. These films are pretty close to a sure thing...
Poor director... Next time ask people..
He may innovate on interface and have some minor hardware achivements, but overall, Apple has only moved ahead as Microsoft caught up. Without MS there wouldn't be anything worthwile from Apple.
Everyone says look how stable the Apple OS is, of course, it only achived that by dropping all their old code and building upon BeOS.
Now he blacklists the very people who love him dearest. Images of abused housewives coming back for another beating fill my head... Here's some advice.. The jackass isn't worth it... Walk away!
Troll me if you want... But Steve's action speak for themselves, this guy has a fear of being insignificance...
Way to go Apple, shoot yourself in the foot again... Next time aim closer and blow it off.
Deep linking is forbidden here.
Better still... Here is the article... Thus no deep linking issue at all.
Game programmers survive the Storm
Former ION studio executives to teach classes at UTD 07/06/2002
By VICTOR GODINEZ / The Dallas Morning News
The spectacular rise and fiery crash of Dallas-based computer game development studio ION Storm were landmark events in the game industry.
Now, the two men who piloted ION Storm, John Romero and Tom Hall, have resurfaced in the most unlikely of jobs: college professors.
Starting in the fall semester, Mr. Romero, 34, and Mr. Hall, 37, will be instructing computer science majors at the University of Texas at Dallas on the finer points of game programming and design.
"We're really excited to teach because we love to teach what we know, and this is the perfect place to do it," Mr. Romero said.
During ION's brief reign atop the gaming world, Mr. Romero almost single-handedly transformed the image of the nerdy game programmer, and he was known as much for his long hair, fast cars and reportedly standoffish attitude as he was for his programming flair.
On a recent afternoon on the UTD campus, Mr. Romero seemed jovial and comfortable as he and Mr. Hall talked about life after ION and their ventures into academia. Mr. Romero's rock star mane of hair was gone, replaced by a more conservative coiffure and slight stubble.
The UTD campus is a short drive from the Dallas penthouse suite in the Chase Tower where the two worked from 1996 to 2001.
But it's light-years away from the rarified air of the multibillion dollar computer game industry that Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall pioneered and rode to fame.
ION Storm was created in 1996, largely on the reputation of Mr. Romero, who helped found id Software in Mesquite, the computer game development firm responsible for mega-hits Doom and Quake.
At ION, Mr. Romero, Mr. Hall and more than 20 other programmers toiled on a game called Daikatana, which was supposed to revolutionize the world of computer games and compete with id's best offerings.
Instead, Daikatana was plagued by delays, internal disagreements documented in the industry press and disputes with publisher and financial backer Eidos, which poured millions of dollars into ION.
When Daikatana finally hit store shelves in April of 2000, it was panned by reviewers.
ION Storm did release one more game, Anachronox, that was well received critically, but the writing was already on the wall and the Dallas office shut down last year, imploding under the weight of its own publicity for Daikatana.
An ION Storm office in Austin did survive the Dallas closure, and released the blockbuster title Deus Ex, but neither Mr. Romero nor Mr. Hall were involved with the Austin location.
Scaling back
Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall did create a small game company shortly after leaving ION Storm called Monkeystone Games.
But Monkeystone's focus is on games for handheld computers, cellphones and portable consoles like Nintendo's GameBoy Advance.
"It's a very big attempt at not taking three to four years to make a game and to get something done really fast and actually get more back into
what we like to do," Mr. Romero said. "At ION we were mainly working in management, managing people, but not able to do what we really wanted to do, and we were kind of torn between it."
"ION was just too big, and now we're back to a nice, small company where we can actually do hands-on work on everything," he added.
Mr. Hall says that while Monkeystone isn't focusing on the big-budget computer game market, that doesn't mean he and Mr. Romero have thrown in the towel.
"Handheld devices are emerging and diverging and swirling around as the exciting new place to be," he said. "Everybody has cellphones and PDAs."
Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall say that working at Monkeystone is less time-consuming than ION Storm, giving them the time to embark on outside projects, such as their courses at UTD.
Learning curve
While Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall will each only be teaching one class next semester, they both say they're already drafting syllabi.
"The overall class for programming is going to be designing a game engine, and all the components that go into the game engine; the networking, the drawing subsystem, the input system, all the major components," Mr. Romero said.
Then students will learn to paste graphics on to the frame they've built and create a small game.
Mr. Hall said he's going to focus more on the design side.
"My class is more studying the whys and wherefores of game design, what you actually do, how you reward the players, the elements that make games fun," he said. "There are a lot of things that you learn, painfully, by experience that I guess these people will get a shortcut to."
"It's kind of fun to step back and analyze your craft and maybe learn some things as well," he added.
Mr. Romero said he hopes to eventually create an entire degree program at UTD in game development and design.
"If it turns out pretty good, we can maybe talk to some of our friends that are here in Dallas that are working at game companies to maybe help out with some new classes, maybe set up some kind of a degree," he said.
"There are a lot of game degrees that are popping up all over the place," Mr. Romero said. "I actually talked to a person at Collin County Community College back when we started ION Storm about doing a degree. But since we had just started ION, we had no time to do that."
Mr. Romero said he and Mr. Hall will probably sprinkle some of the business insights they learned over the years into their classes, but he said they'll mostly stay away from formal instruction on how to create and run a game development company.
"We're not doing a business class, because that's an entire class on its own," Mr. Romero said.
"A business class will knock all the illusions out of their head," Mr. Hall added with a wry grin.
E-mail vgodinez@dallasnews.com
And no I am not karma whoring... Make me a funny.
Hey moderators!!!! Wake up, what do you think will kill us geeks off... Cancer... Monitors, cellphones, wireless all give off radiation, some to lesser degrees, but all contribute to the problem.
Cancer is very relevant, as right now I have a lead belt over my boys to protect them :)
Now that would be appreciated.
Asskissing up the priority queue is just part of the business world, its better then threats or insults, but followups are essential.
When I notify an author about a bug, he acknowledges and fixes it, a thank you is a good thing.
Politeness has its benefits, though some will see it as asskissing, asskissing done well is still very flattering.
Think about all the nice things you said to get some poontang... Was it all true? Did it work? Was it worth it?
Oh wait... this is /. ! No one has any idea what I'm talking about.
Granted not ever OS developer craves attention, and some don't even desire it, but deep down its always welcome.
I'm not an OS developer, but being self-employeed, its sometimes hard to get motivated, other times its very easy.
The OS community needs to become much more appreciative to prevent burnout . The article says it best.
You have S Club... Though I must admit Hanna and Rachel don't hurt the eyes.
BTW, we kicked your Red Coat asses 236 years ago so there...
Sites such as the Internet Paper Mill and Term Papers will start to have to list EssayWritingChicks.com
Now we should be able to hide from these guys.
Plagiarism.com
Plagiarism.org
Wordcheck
Integriguard
Eve
I would like to hear unreleased material, flood the P2P world with stuff not good enough for the CD. Chances are there are some jems in there.
The digital age was suppose to bring choice; different viewing angles, more channels, more music... Instead it is the opposite.
2600's association with hackers, phreakers, and crackers, etc, did not make it easy for them to appear as angels. Though the law shouldn't be biased, it is hard not to be, especially when you don't understand the jargon.
Of course, its getting to the point that judges that do not become technically proficient SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM THE BENCH. If many judges still held racist views, would they be tolerated? I think not.
Judges must become technically knowledgable. Greater effort must be spent on educating judges about technology.
Explaining technology to someone who doesn't understand it is essential.
Wouldn't I owe them 0.014 cents per song per transfer? Even the most aggressive super node couldn't be possibly pushing out more then 1,000 songs a day.. $14 x the amount of days the RIAA has you in their sites...
We need P2P software to be designed as streamers, that way we can only be tacked at a very low rate.
The biggest question is, what are the issues of not owning the material being streamed? Do you need to own it to stream it since you are paying an ownership fee, or is that fee an entitlement to stream?
Some of the best songs that I like the most do not make it to the radio. This includes any of the slower songs (as those types are reserved for Celine Dion, Maria, Madonna, etc.).
CDs really suffer because I can download a song in 10 minutes vs. 8 hours.
The movie industry is safe for a little while longer since their content is so bloody large.
Didn't Rome do this with Games and Gladiators?
Didn't Nazi Germany do similar?
Notice the common theme, these regimes all fell!
If you are itching to take America down, by all means continue with the moral decay that has been cloaked by capitalism, democracy, and acceptance (rather then tolerance)?
As a side note, who says that after these 3 morons and criminals that watching you in the pit next wouldn't be more entertaining.
I also don't think a geek wielding a baseball bat would take out these guys... Thanks for coming out.
What I did read was about very dishonest business practices, fraud, potentially mail fraud if invoices were mailed, threats, etc.
I read an article about some muscle heads that probably used lots of steriods and who suffered from the effects of that drug.
I read about the need for the FBI / local police to open an investigation and put these bastards in jail, sure they ripped off other dot-coms, but the moral decay in corporate America must be stemmed.
I read about why we are headed for a depression because of the complete dishonesty that exists in the stock market / CEOs / Boards and how investors should stop putting money into the markets, cause their collapse and force the government to act and put these people in jail.
But no mention of pushing a button.