...It's their own damn fault. Leave it to MS to produce an operating system (XP Home) that can't even join an MS domain, or keep MS domain credentials to a share. Gee... Mac OS can. Linux can. Man, that must really piss them off...
Well, TOUGH. While they screw around thinking up new ways to frustrate their users and admins (WGA and DRM Extreme anyone?), Linux distros like Ubuntu are really showing true innovation and value.
I've made a pledge not to install Windows on any more 'family' computers. If they want my opinion, I tell them to get a Mac. If they want to update from Windows 98, I install (X)Ubuntu - end of story. No more viruses, no more spyware, no WGA bullshit.
It amazes me how much hardware is supported now, how good OpenOffice.org has gotten, and how smooth Gnome/XFce runs - even on low end machines!
Yes, yes... MS should be scared - but they're doing it to themselves.
But the marketing went beyond stupid tv or press ads. At a time when the Amiga really stood a chance to cash in on the presentations/art biz, C= releases the 500 with a BLACK AND WHITE composite port! Why? They saved about 25 cents on additional components.
Then the color adaptor came out, and it's like 6 friggin inches long (oh, and the monitor pass thru was also on the end of this), making your machine stick out even further from the wall. What in the hell were they thinking?!
I do not blame the engineers - I've met some of them - and I can tell you that they were as pissed off as I was!
I suspect the real reason why a machine's price without Windows would be greater is because of all the crapware/trialware that comes preinstalled. I suspect that this stuff comprises a large amount of profit per machine - especially when a user actually registers the software! Shipping w/FreeDOS or Linux takes away that potential profit.
The question then is, how can you make Ubuntu profitable for companies like Dell?
It's doublespeak - like Windows Genuwine or Darl telling us how licensing will 'get you clean...' DRM in any form is a scam - this is proof of the obvious.
Much educational software is poorly written, even if the content is good. The teachers refuse to part with it (we DID pay for it after all), but a lot of it was written during a time when Windows 95 was still new. There are some newer software that is STILL written that way!
Try running a lot of this stuff as a non-admin and it just doesn't work.
At the bottom of that page is a supposed speech by our illustrious president. Uhmmm. You'd think a Democrat wrote this!:)
Text from Voice of Korea:
The speech of George W Bush to the world audience
"I warn you that don't even think about your lives in the diversity ! The reason is simple. I am the ruler of the United States and the rest of the world. Do you need more reasons than this ? Therefore, every primitive nation must follow American rules and should obey to USA system. I will tell you what to do and you just do what I say. That's enough to make the world secure. Therefore, you just shut up and follow me otherwise I will teach you with my gun and I will shoot your ass as I did to dirty and smelly Afghanistan and Iraq".
The president of USA and the rest of world, George W Bush (Junior !).
...An Atari Flashback 2, and a GC - and yes, I do play all of them from time to time. Thank God for the amount of multiple inputs on my Samsung HDTV. Totally kicks ass!
Replacing my GC will be the Wii. I'm convinced this machine will be successful - although after the initial excitement, I am concerned about 3rd party support. A lot of people will own this machine, but I wonder how many 3rd parties are going to wait until the last second before beginning to code.
I am really hoping for Spore on the Wii. It's got the right control mechanism for such a game, and with online play it should be a totally immersive and amazing experience.
But support aside, I'm certain Nintendo will step up with the games we need for a while.
I work at an all-girls secondary school in PA and I have to tell you that one of the things I see most common is two girls trying to share a single iPod. I think wireless is inevitable, or maybe even a dual jack model. Sure, I know you can get a jack splitter, but it's not the same.
Then too there are disadvantages when you look at basic things like startup time, shutdown time - all of which is time away from an already compressed class time (around 40 minutes per class here).
Now, get me a smart pad with a nice, readable OLED display and make it instant-on? That's more like it...
Read up on what Will Wright did to meet his vision of 'Spore'. He started contacting those Euro demo writers and offered them a chance to be a part of something more than just another 3D FPS in under 64K. He took careful notes on how they were constructing their demos and load screens.
The game industry must evolve to survive - people are tired of Test Drive 27 and Quake 15. The Sims - love it or hate it - has engaged the largest dynamic of users, even women like the game. The simple truth is that the way forward in gaming is the one that emphasizes a combination of exploration and sandboxing with limits that do not feel like limits. That's not something that works well with current design methodology, but it has worked before. It can be done - it will be more difficult to do it, but it can be done.
Earliest cases of in point I can think of:
1) Rescue on Fractalus and Ballblazer on the Atari 400/800/XL by Lucasfilm Games. With such high tech items as fractally generated terrain in real time and algorithmically generated music that reflected the gameplay, they were truly ahead of their time and I don't think anything compared to it's gameplay until Wing Commander many years later.
2) Elite Frontiers on whatever. Frontiers proved you could fit an entire galaxy on three floppies AND make it an interesting game. What game today can you fly down into a planet's atmosphere, through the clouds, and land on a spaceport? You'd think this would be commonplace by now, but it's not. Apparently, outer space is one 3D engine, the spaceport is another.
Sometimes the way forward is the way back. I personally believe that video innovation was held back by the development of bitblt enlargers because it all but mandated the use of pre-generated bitmaps and fake 3D animation. To me, game development has travelled a path not unlike cartoons from the past. From the earliest times of self-generated animation to massive gaming projects, to cheaply animated features, to movies like 'Cars' and games like 'Spore'.
I think games are going in an entirely new direction - one where algorithmic interpretations overtake straight data like bitmaps and pre-rendered video.
Want to see the future? Take a look at 'Spore' from EA/Maxis. I think it's The Next Big Thing. The sheer amount of gameplay is amazing - and I'll bet it's not over 4 GB.
A LOT of things haven't been tried in court properly or with definitive yes/no rules and that's why things are so fuzzy. The music industry does not want a lot of court action (at least where the outcome is not assured) because they might not be able to clamp down as much as they are now.
Sooner or later things are going to come to a head and there will be a clearer line about creating 'mix cd's' or copying a disc for a friend.
So... What's the big deal here? It should be easy enough to test the final IE 7 when it's released and then nail MS to the wall when it proves to be faulty (which you know it will be). MS will probably play their little game of 'let's support just enough to get by, but not so much that AJAX and CSS will cream us'. Still, there's not too much room to wiggle here. They either support the standards or they don't. Simple!
It's yet another dude who thinks 'freedom of religion' means 'freedom of all religion, everywhere, all the time'. I say it's discrimination NOT to consider faith-based organizations who have a proven track record.
How in the hell does a show like this go FIVE SEASONS w/spinoffs and movies and NO GODDAMN GAME?!
Shit! Mary-Kate and Ashley get a game. My Little Pony has a game. There's no end of Star Trek/Wars games, but no real Bab 5 game. It beggars the imagination...
First of all, it's IrfanView, and secondly, why would I want to open pics for preview with something that can take a full minute to load? Irfanview's main goal isn't to be an image editor, it's to be an image VIEWER with a few quick editing tools. In my 'view' Irfanview is still the best free tool to quickly view pics with in Windows. That's not to diminish GiMP, I use this as well, but there is a difference in purpose here.
I've logged more than 80 hours on the 360 version of this game and I'm still loving it! I'm attempting every single quest I can find, not just running through the main quest and calling it 'game over'. I figure I've still got 30-40 hours left - minimum. And I agree with the previous poster, Spore is definately my next game (unless S.T.A.L.K.E.R. makes it out first).
Now that said, I've purchased quite a few Xbox Live Arcade games (waiting for Defender/Stargate!) for when I don't have a spare 6 hours to slog away at Oblivion.
"I'd take Firefox. Every time."...Running on Xubuntu. I just install Xu a few days ago for the first time - it's got an amazingly small footprint and works awesome on an old PII 500 we have here. Seriously, if you haven't tried this on older hardware, get the 6.06 version. Simply great!
Oh, and of course it runs the newest versions of Firefox.
Hey! I THOUGHT I'd used something like that before. I haven't installed SuSE in a while, but yeah, I have seen that before! Fortunately, Ubuntu has been pretty good at IDing my gfx / monitor combinations - even on some tricky (READ: old/unsupported) hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
OMG, I forgot about that too! What was WRONG with those people??!!
...It's their own damn fault. Leave it to MS to produce an operating system (XP Home) that can't even join an MS domain, or keep MS domain credentials to a share. Gee... Mac OS can. Linux can. Man, that must really piss them off...
Well, TOUGH. While they screw around thinking up new ways to frustrate their users and admins (WGA and DRM Extreme anyone?), Linux distros like Ubuntu are really showing true innovation and value.
I've made a pledge not to install Windows on any more 'family' computers. If they want my opinion, I tell them to get a Mac. If they want to update from Windows 98, I install (X)Ubuntu - end of story. No more viruses, no more spyware, no WGA bullshit.
It amazes me how much hardware is supported now, how good OpenOffice.org has gotten, and how smooth Gnome/XFce runs - even on low end machines!
Yes, yes... MS should be scared - but they're doing it to themselves.
But the marketing went beyond stupid tv or press ads. At a time when the Amiga really stood a chance to cash in on the presentations/art biz, C= releases the 500 with a BLACK AND WHITE composite port! Why? They saved about 25 cents on additional components.
Then the color adaptor came out, and it's like 6 friggin inches long (oh, and the monitor pass thru was also on the end of this), making your machine stick out even further from the wall. What in the hell were they thinking?!
I do not blame the engineers - I've met some of them - and I can tell you that they were as pissed off as I was!
I suspect the real reason why a machine's price without Windows would be greater is because of all the crapware/trialware that comes preinstalled. I suspect that this stuff comprises a large amount of profit per machine - especially when a user actually registers the software! Shipping w/FreeDOS or Linux takes away that potential profit.
The question then is, how can you make Ubuntu profitable for companies like Dell?
It's doublespeak - like Windows Genuwine or Darl telling us how licensing will 'get you clean...' DRM in any form is a scam - this is proof of the obvious.
OpenOffice.org's 'Genuwine Advantage' is that you don't actually have to be Microsoft's bitch to use a word processor...
Much educational software is poorly written, even if the content is good. The teachers refuse to part with it (we DID pay for it after all), but a lot of it was written during a time when Windows 95 was still new. There are some newer software that is STILL written that way!
Try running a lot of this stuff as a non-admin and it just doesn't work.
At the bottom of that page is a supposed speech by our illustrious president. Uhmmm. You'd think a Democrat wrote this! :)
Text from Voice of Korea:
The speech of George W Bush to the world audience
"I warn you that don't even think about your lives in the diversity ! The reason is simple. I am the ruler of the United States and the rest of the world. Do you need more reasons than this ? Therefore, every primitive nation must follow American rules and should obey to USA system. I will tell you what to do and you just do what I say. That's enough to make the world secure. Therefore, you just shut up and follow me otherwise I will teach you with my gun and I will shoot your ass as I did to dirty and smelly Afghanistan and Iraq".
The president of USA and the rest of world, George W Bush (Junior !).
Uh... Yeah...
I just tested the site against my Blue Coat proxy and it finds Vdare.com to be a 'Political/Activist Site'. That doesn't seem too unobjectionable...
Apparently about as well as the last administration's appeasment.
The reason why the US will keep quiet and doubt this publically is because Kim Il did this for publicity to begin with - why give him what he wants?
...An Atari Flashback 2, and a GC - and yes, I do play all of them from time to time. Thank God for the amount of multiple inputs on my Samsung HDTV. Totally kicks ass!
Replacing my GC will be the Wii. I'm convinced this machine will be successful - although after the initial excitement, I am concerned about 3rd party support. A lot of people will own this machine, but I wonder how many 3rd parties are going to wait until the last second before beginning to code.
I am really hoping for Spore on the Wii. It's got the right control mechanism for such a game, and with online play it should be a totally immersive and amazing experience.
But support aside, I'm certain Nintendo will step up with the games we need for a while.
So... When can I pre-order again?
I work at an all-girls secondary school in PA and I have to tell you that one of the things I see most common is two girls trying to share a single iPod. I think wireless is inevitable, or maybe even a dual jack model. Sure, I know you can get a jack splitter, but it's not the same.
Then too there are disadvantages when you look at basic things like startup time, shutdown time - all of which is time away from an already compressed class time (around 40 minutes per class here).
Now, get me a smart pad with a nice, readable OLED display and make it instant-on? That's more like it...
Read up on what Will Wright did to meet his vision of 'Spore'. He started contacting those Euro demo writers and offered them a chance to be a part of something more than just another 3D FPS in under 64K. He took careful notes on how they were constructing their demos and load screens.
The game industry must evolve to survive - people are tired of Test Drive 27 and Quake 15. The Sims - love it or hate it - has engaged the largest dynamic of users, even women like the game. The simple truth is that the way forward in gaming is the one that emphasizes a combination of exploration and sandboxing with limits that do not feel like limits. That's not something that works well with current design methodology, but it has worked before. It can be done - it will be more difficult to do it, but it can be done.
Earliest cases of in point I can think of:
1) Rescue on Fractalus and Ballblazer on the Atari 400/800/XL by Lucasfilm Games. With such high tech items as fractally generated terrain in real time and algorithmically generated music that reflected the gameplay, they were truly ahead of their time and I don't think anything compared to it's gameplay until Wing Commander many years later.
2) Elite Frontiers on whatever. Frontiers proved you could fit an entire galaxy on three floppies AND make it an interesting game. What game today can you fly down into a planet's atmosphere, through the clouds, and land on a spaceport? You'd think this would be commonplace by now, but it's not. Apparently, outer space is one 3D engine, the spaceport is another.
Sometimes the way forward is the way back. I personally believe that video innovation was held back by the development of bitblt enlargers because it all but mandated the use of pre-generated bitmaps and fake 3D animation. To me, game development has travelled a path not unlike cartoons from the past. From the earliest times of self-generated animation to massive gaming projects, to cheaply animated features, to movies like 'Cars' and games like 'Spore'.
I think games are going in an entirely new direction - one where algorithmic interpretations overtake straight data like bitmaps and pre-rendered video.
Want to see the future? Take a look at 'Spore' from EA/Maxis. I think it's The Next Big Thing. The sheer amount of gameplay is amazing - and I'll bet it's not over 4 GB.
A LOT of things haven't been tried in court properly or with definitive yes/no rules and that's why things are so fuzzy. The music industry does not want a lot of court action (at least where the outcome is not assured) because they might not be able to clamp down as much as they are now.
Sooner or later things are going to come to a head and there will be a clearer line about creating 'mix cd's' or copying a disc for a friend.
So... What's the big deal here? It should be easy enough to test the final IE 7 when it's released and then nail MS to the wall when it proves to be faulty (which you know it will be). MS will probably play their little game of 'let's support just enough to get by, but not so much that AJAX and CSS will cream us'. Still, there's not too much room to wiggle here. They either support the standards or they don't. Simple!
Until she tries to stop her AOL service! Now THAT should be a lawsuit!
It's yet another dude who thinks 'freedom of religion' means 'freedom of all religion, everywhere, all the time'. I say it's discrimination NOT to consider faith-based organizations who have a proven track record.
How in the hell does a show like this go FIVE SEASONS w/spinoffs and movies and NO GODDAMN GAME?!
Shit! Mary-Kate and Ashley get a game. My Little Pony has a game. There's no end of Star Trek/Wars games, but no real Bab 5 game. It beggars the imagination...
First of all, it's IrfanView, and secondly, why would I want to open pics for preview with something that can take a full minute to load? Irfanview's main goal isn't to be an image editor, it's to be an image VIEWER with a few quick editing tools. In my 'view' Irfanview is still the best free tool to quickly view pics with in Windows. That's not to diminish GiMP, I use this as well, but there is a difference in purpose here.
I've logged more than 80 hours on the 360 version of this game and I'm still loving it! I'm attempting every single quest I can find, not just running through the main quest and calling it 'game over'. I figure I've still got 30-40 hours left - minimum. And I agree with the previous poster, Spore is definately my next game (unless S.T.A.L.K.E.R. makes it out first).
Now that said, I've purchased quite a few Xbox Live Arcade games (waiting for Defender/Stargate!) for when I don't have a spare 6 hours to slog away at Oblivion.
"I'd take Firefox. Every time." ...Running on Xubuntu. I just install Xu a few days ago for the first time - it's got an amazingly small footprint and works awesome on an old PII 500 we have here. Seriously, if you haven't tried this on older hardware, get the 6.06 version. Simply great!
Oh, and of course it runs the newest versions of Firefox.
Hey! I THOUGHT I'd used something like that before. I haven't installed SuSE in a while, but yeah, I have seen that before! Fortunately, Ubuntu has been pretty good at IDing my gfx / monitor combinations - even on some tricky (READ: old/unsupported) hardware.