I'm afraid that the reality is much different to the way you portray it.
Most Linux people will know Windows very well and, when it comes to making comparisons between the two, can argue at a good technical level.
Most Windows people do not know Linux very well and that is entirely to be expected. But because of that fact, when they get into comparitive arguments with Linux people, they can only use what they *believe* to be the case (usually FUD) with Linux rather than what is actually the case - which is when someone like me will step in to correct them, in much the same way as a few obviously more experienced Windows sysadmins than me have corrected my arguments on a couple of occasions. The result of that is that hopefully we all learn something new occasionally.
As a mostly Linux user, I don't actually give a toss about this topic anyway - in much the same way that I really didn't give a toss when IBM used a white-haired kid to advertise Linux a few years ago.
I think you'll find that the majority of Linux people on here aren't fanbois but computer techies who treat Linux as a useful tool to get stuff done in, just like any other OS.
Yes, you can't beat Linux and scripting for being able to embrace the power of a computer - but you also can't beat XP as a games platform and as a platform for knocking out training slides in Powerpoint and whilst I don't do much graphics or video editing work, there's nothing on Linux to compete with Photoshop etc. (though The GIMP does everything I need from a graphics editor).
By that statement alone, I suspect you've read very few of them, if any.
Personally, my only criteria is whether or not it's entertaining and whether a book's quality justifies it going under the "Star Trek", "Star Wars", "James Bond" or "Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy" name.
And if people are stupid enough not to read the small print, that's their problem.
I don't see why so many people see this as such a great problem - this kind of stuff has been going on for years.
What about the countless Star Trek books that have been written over the years, generally by authors who never had anything to do with writing for any of the original TV series or movies?
Or how about the additional Star Wars books? It could be argued that a few books from the "X-Wing" series of books would have made much better movies than the dire Episodes 1 to 3.
Or what about the newer James Bond books written by the likes of John Gardner, Raymond Benson & Kingsley Amis?
I've read selections of books from all the above and some are very good and others not so good.
So just leave it at that - if it gets written, decide when you read it. As far as I'm concerned, as a huge British HHGTTG fan, it can't be any worse than that Americanised piece of trash adaptation that hit the cinema screens a few years ago!
So, in other words, we honest gamers should continue to buy games so that the games companies make some profits in order to release more games that you can download free of charge.
I do buy CDs and I am picky with the ones I buy because I don't buy them before I've listened to them once.
That means I never buy a duff CD which in turn means I consider them good value for money - so I really don't give a toss where the money goes beyond that point.
Please don't automatically equate CD buying with financing the RIAA - legal music downloads cost more for less quality and the RIAA still gets some of the proceeds.
I think what's funnier is having the application form visible to Slashdotters now.
How many bogus applications do you think they are now going to get from "Mike Rowsoft-Sucks" and "Tux Penguin" do you think they are *now* going to get?
They control the product, the store and the whole experience for a reason... to make them look extremely polished and extremely in control.
Well, if I ever had a reason to try out an Apple product, you've just destroyed it in that one sentence. What about if I want to use a computer but don't *want* to be controlled?
I used to be very smug about phishing until about a year ago when I fell for one.
I'm a security consultant for a telecoms company, Linux/UNIX geek and have 30 years experience in computers. But on a particularly hectic day about 6 months ago, I had an email pop up about my Paypal account being disabled unless I logged in and did something - and I did just that, giving away my username and password in the process!
As soon as I'd sent my details in the phishing form, I realised my mistake. I immediately cancelled the bank/credit cards that were on Paypal's records, changed my eBay and Paypal passwords and reporting the phishing site to Paypal. The site disappeared within about 30 minutes and I suffered no adverse problems.
Believe me, it *can* happen to the best of us! It just needs a little lax concentration and not thinking before you send that form off.
Apple fanbois exist purely because of clever Apple marketing.
Macbooks and OS X are marketed as "exclusive" products so that to appeal to a minority who need to feel part of an elitist club without having to work at it - let's face it, anyone who chose to use Linux to make a political statement would like an idiot unless he/she spent a lot of time learning how to work with it. Apples are, to my knowledge, easy to use and therefore save on spending time with a steep learning curve.
Incidentally, this isn't a direct criticism of OS X because in 30 years of computing I've never found a reason to own one single Apple product so I can't comment on how good or bad it is - yes, I use mostly Linux and quite a bit of Windows and both of those together do everything that I need a computer to do.
But Macs will always be a minority product compared to PCs running Windows, as I suspect Linux will probably be also. Apple does not have the capability to support a version of OS X on PCs because it does not have the resource to devote to getting OS X to work with countless different types of CPU and hardware on PCs - that's the core reason why there won't be a version of OS X for the PC.
And before any Apple users disagree with me, can I ask how many of you have ever hidden or removed the Apple logo from any Mac that you own? I suspect none of you because displaying the logo is just as important, if not more so, than the usability of the machine and OS X.
most average consumers don't give a crap about Microsoft vs. Linux
Most of we geeks don't either. Anyone who doesn't treat a piece of software as a tool to get a job done and then not choose the best tool for the job, is an idiot. To a geek, that's all that matters - not who made it.
Yes I do, and so do many. However, I'm not going to say, "to hell with all gaming after 1995" just because my friends and I have fun with a few retro games at our LANs.
And I agree with you and my attitude is entirely the same. But I don't care what the game title is or how "big" it is - if it sounds like it comes with a lot of DRM and protection baggage, or is badly bugged on release, then I won't buy it. I've plenty of other stuff to go play while I'm waiting for something new to come out.
Perhaps you should buy a couple of recently hyped games and see what the fuss is all about before passing judgement on this hobby and everyone who has it. Who knows, they might be more fun than you originally thought. (=
With all respect, I am an avid gamer, albeit an older one, and have every right to "pass judgement" on a hobby that occupies a lot of my time - especially when I buy all the games I play, rather than just copying them.
You seem to have missed my point entirely - namely that if a games company isn't doing what you want then let them know about it and don't part with good money for inferior products.
...the poor and the elderly in the UK are going to be dying of hypothermia this Winter due to the lack of any government subsidies towards increased fuel bills for heating their homes!
But yes, we can afford to use taxes to finance the education system into delivering this shit.
I'm British and a Star Wars fan - and there used to be a time when I was quite proud of being both...
I don't get all this immense overhype over new games or ceaseless whining because a game comes out on a console first or doesn't come out on the PC at all.
Don't you people find gaming fun in maybe digging out some old titles and downloading a few new levels to play? Or maybe grabbing an update engine for, say, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake or Doom? Or even grabbing 15 minutes online in a freebie deathmatch with "World Of Padman" or "Warsow"?
I don't get this online games thingie anyway. I play a lot of games and maybe it's an attention span thing but I *really* don't want to devote a fair proportion of my life to just *one* game like WoW or this new Star Wars game. I don't mind taking my time finishing a game like HL2 because I've no reason to rush and I'm going to look pretty stupid as a fat middle-aged bloke going into my office and bragging to my workmates about how I'm so amazing for "getting past the tripods" before they did.
And then there's the endless copy-protection and DRM shit to contend with - Jesus, people! The idea is *very simple* - you pay some money in your local game store and they let you have a game that you can take home, install, play with and maybe add a mod or two to it so that it entertains you; not spend half your life making phones calls for new registration keys because you've installed it more than three times or tapping in anti-EA hate mail on Amazon because you're naive enough to buy a game before doing some investigation first...
It's very simple - a lot of games companies treat us like shit because far too many gamers have let them get away with it for far too long.
You cannot make this comparison as they are not the same thing.
"Sudo" (which is a generic UNIX tool, not just for Linux) is designed to allow a user to run programs as if they are root whereas UAC is more about allowing programs system-level access.
Linux is poorly documented, has little to no code reuse, no real design (leading to modules being rewritten to fix bugs and design flaws while introducing even more), a ton of race conditions (causing stability and security issues), and scales very poorly in an SMP setting (the BKL is a joke).
Your statement above indicates only one thing to me - you know nothing about Linux.
There is as much documentation for Linux as there is for Windows, it's more of a case that most users of operating systems just cannot be bothered to read books, program documentation or search web sites when they encounter a problem.
No code reuse??? You're kidding me, right? That's the *whole point* of the GPL, that code *is* reused!
No real design and race/stability conditions? Again, you clearly show your ignorance. Yes, I agree that hardware vendors do not support Linux as well as they do Windows when it comes to drivers but all that means is that because of a need to backwards engineer drivers, some Linux drivers do not have the equivalent functionality to Windows ones. But that's not a fault of Linux, it's a fault of the hardware vendors not handing out specifications.
As a power user of Linux for 10+ years now, and Windows for longer, I can honestly say that I have rarely seen Linux crash as a result of a driver problem - and even then it's happened because of a kernel that I have myself compiled, at which point I just boot into the old kernel again and just do some investigation. Yes, I've had lots of standing around waiting for a new kernel to come out so that an included driver will have the functionality I need, but that's nothing to do with stability.
Yes, Linux does have its problems, just like any other OS. But it's you that is treating it as a "threat" to your beloved Windows, not anyone else. And if you're going to make statements like you have done, then please be prepared to qualify them properly - otherwise you yourself will appear to be a zealot.
I work for a telecoms company that produces major PBX and call-centre reporting systems and just about all of our products now run on Linux. Much of that has to do with the world moving away from commercial UNIXes to Linux, but the fact is that any attempts (in the early days of our migrations to commercial OSes) to migrate to Windows for anything but the smallest systems failed. Windows *does* have a place when it comes to integrating client applications into a customer Windows network - but the fact is Windows is too big and bloaty for this kind of application whereas Linux can be optimised and streamlined much more.
In other words, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm afraid that the reality is much different to the way you portray it.
Most Linux people will know Windows very well and, when it comes to making comparisons between the two, can argue at a good technical level.
Most Windows people do not know Linux very well and that is entirely to be expected. But because of that fact, when they get into comparitive arguments with Linux people, they can only use what they *believe* to be the case (usually FUD) with Linux rather than what is actually the case - which is when someone like me will step in to correct them, in much the same way as a few obviously more experienced Windows sysadmins than me have corrected my arguments on a couple of occasions. The result of that is that hopefully we all learn something new occasionally.
As a mostly Linux user, I don't actually give a toss about this topic anyway - in much the same way that I really didn't give a toss when IBM used a white-haired kid to advertise Linux a few years ago.
I think you'll find that the majority of Linux people on here aren't fanbois but computer techies who treat Linux as a useful tool to get stuff done in, just like any other OS.
Yes, you can't beat Linux and scripting for being able to embrace the power of a computer - but you also can't beat XP as a games platform and as a platform for knocking out training slides in Powerpoint and whilst I don't do much graphics or video editing work, there's nothing on Linux to compete with Photoshop etc. (though The GIMP does everything I need from a graphics editor).
So please don't tar us all with the same brush.
What about 'em? Well they're crap, that's what.
By that statement alone, I suspect you've read very few of them, if any.
Personally, my only criteria is whether or not it's entertaining and whether a book's quality justifies it going under the "Star Trek", "Star Wars", "James Bond" or "Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy" name.
And if people are stupid enough not to read the small print, that's their problem.
I don't see why so many people see this as such a great problem - this kind of stuff has been going on for years.
What about the countless Star Trek books that have been written over the years, generally by authors who never had anything to do with writing for any of the original TV series or movies?
Or how about the additional Star Wars books? It could be argued that a few books from the "X-Wing" series of books would have made much better movies than the dire Episodes 1 to 3.
Or what about the newer James Bond books written by the likes of John Gardner, Raymond Benson & Kingsley Amis?
I've read selections of books from all the above and some are very good and others not so good.
So just leave it at that - if it gets written, decide when you read it. As far as I'm concerned, as a huge British HHGTTG fan, it can't be any worse than that Americanised piece of trash adaptation that hit the cinema screens a few years ago!
I hate to say this but your comments are doing nothing to further everyone else's perceptions of the intelligence of the AC crowd on here either.
Pardon me, Einstein, but you yourself are voicing your opinion on a message board designed for anyone to voice their opinions on.
Perhaps you need to learn to not take the opinions of others so much to heart.
So, in other words, we honest gamers should continue to buy games so that the games companies make some profits in order to release more games that you can download free of charge.
Hmmm...
I do buy CDs and I am picky with the ones I buy because I don't buy them before I've listened to them once.
That means I never buy a duff CD which in turn means I consider them good value for money - so I really don't give a toss where the money goes beyond that point.
Please don't automatically equate CD buying with financing the RIAA - legal music downloads cost more for less quality and the RIAA still gets some of the proceeds.
This is a general discussion web site - I wasn't aware that all postings were considered to be *whispered*.
Norma Soverhead
Pat Chitdaily
Dee Fragmuch
Alotta Buggs
Ivor Bluescreen
Jen Protectionfault
D.L.L. Smissing
Mal Wareholes
Bill Ownsmee
Justin Safemode
I think what's funnier is having the application form visible to Slashdotters now.
How many bogus applications do you think they are now going to get from "Mike Rowsoft-Sucks" and "Tux Penguin" do you think they are *now* going to get?
They control the product, the store and the whole experience for a reason... to make them look extremely polished and extremely in control.
Well, if I ever had a reason to try out an Apple product, you've just destroyed it in that one sentence. What about if I want to use a computer but don't *want* to be controlled?
You really should meet my missus.
Whenever she forgets to send a birthday card to her mother, it's my fault for not reminding her.
This is Zogmorfix from the planet Mars speaking.
In case you were wondering, BitTorrent has an average download rate of 1kb/decade here also.
[MESSAGE ENDS]
I used to be very smug about phishing until about a year ago when I fell for one.
I'm a security consultant for a telecoms company, Linux/UNIX geek and have 30 years experience in computers. But on a particularly hectic day about 6 months ago, I had an email pop up about my Paypal account being disabled unless I logged in and did something - and I did just that, giving away my username and password in the process!
As soon as I'd sent my details in the phishing form, I realised my mistake. I immediately cancelled the bank/credit cards that were on Paypal's records, changed my eBay and Paypal passwords and reporting the phishing site to Paypal. The site disappeared within about 30 minutes and I suffered no adverse problems.
Believe me, it *can* happen to the best of us! It just needs a little lax concentration and not thinking before you send that form off.
So stay alert and don't get too smug about it. :-)
Apple fanbois exist purely because of clever Apple marketing.
Macbooks and OS X are marketed as "exclusive" products so that to appeal to a minority who need to feel part of an elitist club without having to work at it - let's face it, anyone who chose to use Linux to make a political statement would like an idiot unless he/she spent a lot of time learning how to work with it. Apples are, to my knowledge, easy to use and therefore save on spending time with a steep learning curve.
Incidentally, this isn't a direct criticism of OS X because in 30 years of computing I've never found a reason to own one single Apple product so I can't comment on how good or bad it is - yes, I use mostly Linux and quite a bit of Windows and both of those together do everything that I need a computer to do.
But Macs will always be a minority product compared to PCs running Windows, as I suspect Linux will probably be also. Apple does not have the capability to support a version of OS X on PCs because it does not have the resource to devote to getting OS X to work with countless different types of CPU and hardware on PCs - that's the core reason why there won't be a version of OS X for the PC.
And before any Apple users disagree with me, can I ask how many of you have ever hidden or removed the Apple logo from any Mac that you own? I suspect none of you because displaying the logo is just as important, if not more so, than the usability of the machine and OS X.
most average consumers don't give a crap about Microsoft vs. Linux
Most of we geeks don't either. Anyone who doesn't treat a piece of software as a tool to get a job done and then not choose the best tool for the job, is an idiot. To a geek, that's all that matters - not who made it.
Yes I do, and so do many. However, I'm not going to say, "to hell with all gaming after 1995" just because my friends and I have fun with a few retro games at our LANs.
And I agree with you and my attitude is entirely the same. But I don't care what the game title is or how "big" it is - if it sounds like it comes with a lot of DRM and protection baggage, or is badly bugged on release, then I won't buy it. I've plenty of other stuff to go play while I'm waiting for something new to come out.
Perhaps you should buy a couple of recently hyped games and see what the fuss is all about before passing judgement on this hobby and everyone who has it. Who knows, they might be more fun than you originally thought. (=
With all respect, I am an avid gamer, albeit an older one, and have every right to "pass judgement" on a hobby that occupies a lot of my time - especially when I buy all the games I play, rather than just copying them.
You seem to have missed my point entirely - namely that if a games company isn't doing what you want then let them know about it and don't part with good money for inferior products.
...the poor and the elderly in the UK are going to be dying of hypothermia this Winter due to the lack of any government subsidies towards increased fuel bills for heating their homes!
But yes, we can afford to use taxes to finance the education system into delivering this shit.
I'm British and a Star Wars fan - and there used to be a time when I was quite proud of being both...
I don't get all this immense overhype over new games or ceaseless whining because a game comes out on a console first or doesn't come out on the PC at all.
Don't you people find gaming fun in maybe digging out some old titles and downloading a few new levels to play? Or maybe grabbing an update engine for, say, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake or Doom? Or even grabbing 15 minutes online in a freebie deathmatch with "World Of Padman" or "Warsow"?
I don't get this online games thingie anyway. I play a lot of games and maybe it's an attention span thing but I *really* don't want to devote a fair proportion of my life to just *one* game like WoW or this new Star Wars game. I don't mind taking my time finishing a game like HL2 because I've no reason to rush and I'm going to look pretty stupid as a fat middle-aged bloke going into my office and bragging to my workmates about how I'm so amazing for "getting past the tripods" before they did.
And then there's the endless copy-protection and DRM shit to contend with - Jesus, people! The idea is *very simple* - you pay some money in your local game store and they let you have a game that you can take home, install, play with and maybe add a mod or two to it so that it entertains you; not spend half your life making phones calls for new registration keys because you've installed it more than three times or tapping in anti-EA hate mail on Amazon because you're naive enough to buy a game before doing some investigation first...
It's very simple - a lot of games companies treat us like shit because far too many gamers have let them get away with it for far too long.
Please GROW SOME BACKBONES, people!
I already know how to hide pr0n from the missus, I just need you to get it to me *FASTER*!
Why is the fact that manufacturers don't release the specifications of their hardware a *Linux* problem?
You cannot make this comparison as they are not the same thing.
"Sudo" (which is a generic UNIX tool, not just for Linux) is designed to allow a user to run programs as if they are root whereas UAC is more about allowing programs system-level access.
Linux is poorly documented, has little to no code reuse, no real design (leading to modules being rewritten to fix bugs and design flaws while introducing even more), a ton of race conditions (causing stability and security issues), and scales very poorly in an SMP setting (the BKL is a joke).
Your statement above indicates only one thing to me - you know nothing about Linux.
There is as much documentation for Linux as there is for Windows, it's more of a case that most users of operating systems just cannot be bothered to read books, program documentation or search web sites when they encounter a problem.
No code reuse??? You're kidding me, right? That's the *whole point* of the GPL, that code *is* reused!
No real design and race/stability conditions? Again, you clearly show your ignorance. Yes, I agree that hardware vendors do not support Linux as well as they do Windows when it comes to drivers but all that means is that because of a need to backwards engineer drivers, some Linux drivers do not have the equivalent functionality to Windows ones. But that's not a fault of Linux, it's a fault of the hardware vendors not handing out specifications.
As a power user of Linux for 10+ years now, and Windows for longer, I can honestly say that I have rarely seen Linux crash as a result of a driver problem - and even then it's happened because of a kernel that I have myself compiled, at which point I just boot into the old kernel again and just do some investigation. Yes, I've had lots of standing around waiting for a new kernel to come out so that an included driver will have the functionality I need, but that's nothing to do with stability.
Yes, Linux does have its problems, just like any other OS. But it's you that is treating it as a "threat" to your beloved Windows, not anyone else. And if you're going to make statements like you have done, then please be prepared to qualify them properly - otherwise you yourself will appear to be a zealot.
I work for a telecoms company that produces major PBX and call-centre reporting systems and just about all of our products now run on Linux. Much of that has to do with the world moving away from commercial UNIXes to Linux, but the fact is that any attempts (in the early days of our migrations to commercial OSes) to migrate to Windows for anything but the smallest systems failed. Windows *does* have a place when it comes to integrating client applications into a customer Windows network - but the fact is Windows is too big and bloaty for this kind of application whereas Linux can be optimised and streamlined much more.
In other words, you have no idea what you're talking about.