"Lightwave availability strikes me as a pointless digression."
Hardly pointless. Replace Lightwave with.. oh.. any game ever made and suddenly a chord is struck with everybody who has a PC at home.
Be serious. People use their PC's to perform certain tasks. Windows has the best variety of mission critical apps out there. Linux has alternatives, but they're not always sufficient today.
It's great making your computer boot, but that's not what you bought it for.
Re:Price is not everything...
on
Linux Is Cheaper
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
"Summary Ley you can under wine with success... and they are porting it!"
We're months away from having the screamernet version (i.e. render only, you still need a Windows machine to set up the animation/modelling etc) and probably at least a year or two away from a Linux version.
Which is fine. If Linux is a good OS that'll run Lightwave a year or two from now then I'll be happy to evaluate it.
Just to be clear: I'm not saying Linux is worthless, I'm saying that this zealousy over it won't solve anybody's problems. As a matter of fact, it'll probably cause problems. Most of my company frequents Slashdot. Let's say they were taken in by the hype and adopted Linux. Guess what? Expectations are high, which means that every little problem will be blown out of proportion. Before you know it, everybody's anti-Linux.
We're already having that happen today. Some of the engineers have been moved to Linux, and they're fussing over every idiotic problem that Windows just doesn't have. The worst part is having to look up badly spelt commands in order to figure out what to do. They're having to make compromises in order to get through their day.
If this happens on a grand scale, then what? You get the bigwigs around companies everywhere saying "What a nightmare. I'll stick with the company that understands our needs best."
Slashdot'd be smart to pull back on these worthless debates. Raise the bar too high and Linux'll never be accepted.
Re:That's because Linux admins are self-taught
on
Linux Is Cheaper
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
"The obvious reason that Linux admins are better sysadmins (overall) and can admin more machines is because they're, er, mostly self-taught."
Perhaps. Thing is though, Windows isn't exactly that hard to maintain. The company I work for has had between 15-20 people over the last 5 years and runs on a mostly NT-based network. Have we had our share of difficulties? Sure. Have we ever needed an admin to maintain it? No. Most problems have been resolved by the people who stumbled over them. We had a sysadmin up until a couple of years ago. When he left, I absorbed his responsibilities. Yet, I still have plenty of time to post on/..
I'm sure there's some truth to this in bigger companies, but Linux has been nothing but a problem for us here because the one person we have who can fix the problems is overloaded.
Price is not everything...
on
Linux Is Cheaper
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
People could pay me money to install Linux, I still still can't use Lightwave on it today.
I mean seriously, the OS isn't the biggest issue when using computers at a business. There's apps and there's the people using it. One could make the argument that Macs are more expensive than Windows based machines, but some places still choose to use them.
I guess what I'm really saying is "Yah, whatever, it's still not a decisive argument."
"I'm glad some people finally understand that the battle isn't about markets or choosing a software license, but freedom. All to often people think that free markets are about markets, and not freedom. But just the opposite is true, when a society has healthy freedoms - the markets tend to take care of themselves."
One of the freedoms we have to accept is that MS is allowed to express their views on GPL.
"Yes, I've played it. I own it. The story is somewhat different, and there are some neat mini levels (with the acapella original SMB theme, sweet!), but overall there's very little to distinguish Super Mario Sunshine from Super Mario 64 "
I would disagree. I'm not a Mario zealot by any means, but I was pleasantly surprised with this game. The addition of the watergun was no small feature. There's a lot more to that was added to that game as a result of the watergun than just another feature. It was another dimension of game play. I doubt I'll convince you of that in this post, but it really did make your mind shift gears to play. Though I will happily concede that Sunshine built from Mario 64's success, but the satisfaction from playing that game is significantly different from what you got from Mario 64.
"Super Mario Sunshine, while still a good game in its own right, just doesn't follow the trend..."
I'm sorry, I just don't agree. Think about what it takes to get through Mario Sunshine and then think about what it takes to get through Mario 64. Hopefully the differences will start to appear. It's kind of like comparing Super Mario 3 to the original Super Mario Bros. Still the same foundation, but a good deal of depth was added just by adding a few new rules to the game.
"Then again, given what Nintendo has been doing, rehashing older Mario games on the GBA..."
Sorry to be nitpicky here, but that's not a rehash. Sonic 1 to Sonic 2, that's a rehash. This is a port.
I'm not arguing with you just for the fun of it. I felt the same way you did when I first fired up Sunshine. It wasn't until I started getting deeper into the game that I realized there was quite a bit more to do in it. Would I describe it as revolutionary? Nope. I'm not saying it's that different. I do feel, though, that it stands very well. It makes me very curious what Zelda's going to be like...
"And people wonder why it is so hard to make money in the computer game industry...how many people, getting paid how much, have worked for so long to make this game? What are the chances it will come even close to breaking even? If every person that owned a computer bought a copy of this game, at the insane price it would have to be, would that even be enough?It has been said before but bears repeating: the games of yesteryear had something that all these new games, with their fancy graphics and supposedly advanced AIs, still can't seem to replace. Repeat after us Mr. Game developers: it's all the gameplay."
"It has come to the attention of many of the affluent SUV owners that low-income people and students and other undesirables drive economical cars and drive many miles on not much gasoline and are thus not paying their fair share of gasoline taxes and are thereby beating the system."
There's been some discussion on the radio that what's sparking this idea is that hybrid cars are getting more and more popular.
I think this is an amusing adoption of technology, but I don't think these guys understand the practicality of what they're trying to do.
Part of the larger problem in Oregon is that we have no sales tax. The property owners bear that burden. Now we're having revenue troubles, so anytime somebody suggests a sales tax everybody get's their panties in a bunch.
The result? Now they're talking about an entertainment tax. Nobody wants that either!
I think it's funny as hell, but I'm planning to move out of this state this year.
"It does explain why they're doing this, it just doesn't make sense."
In the 'Going Through your Garbage' story yesterday, I made this post and got modded as off-topic. Is it funny now?
In all seriousness though, this is just a taste of the weekly radio comedy we Oregonians are exposed to. I'm definitely looking forward to moving out of this state.
"It's new years eve! Do you people really not have anything more exciting to be doing than reading Slashdot? You'd never catch me posting on a geek news site on the party night of the year. Ever."
A user has given a Hypocrite (-1) moderation to your comment
" By putting it on the curb, you have shown that you want the city to come and take it away."
I disagree. People should be able to discard all evidence of wrong doing so that they can maintain their freedom!
Okay, bad time for a joke like that. I half agree. Ever hear of a 'search warrant'? Due process? If the city has a search warrant to go through my garbage, that's fine. The ability to do it willy nilly is wrong. Fortunately, WW proved to the right people why it's wrong. It's nosey.
There are matters of privacy here. What if they found a pair of panties a little too small for the politician's wife? Funny? Yes. Our business? No.
"This seems really, but would it be enjoyable to watch? A lot of art is just "hey, cool!" and then is put on a shelf. This really cool idea is only really cool because it's so original, it will never be cool again."
There's hope. Beavis and Butthead's decaying animation style still lives on.
"How about a pizza company refusing to accept orders from a paticular motel because often noone will admit to ordering there? Stay at a different motel."
Um, exactly how much research are you expecting people to do on motels? Call them up and say "Can I order pizza there?"
"If you are using an ISP that does not enforce acceptable use policies restricting unsolicited email, you are supporting spaming activity."
As opposed to what? Exactly how is one supposed to go about finding out about how effective an ISP's attempts to filter spam are? The biggest problem with your argument is that spammers always change how they operate.
Sorry, but your answers struck me as oversimplified and unhelpful. How that was modded up as 'insightful' I'll never know.
" He's not saying that to provoke a reaction, he's saying it because he's dumb and doesn't know how wrong he is."
I think he is saying it to provoke a reaction. I can't imagine somebody would be sitting there saying "I hate PVRs... Hmm.. well the only ding I have against them is drive noise."
And no, 'You Idiot!!!' is trolling. Flamebait is when you say, no matter how right you are, that Windows 2000 is a better desktop OS than any distro of Linux.
"I find it amusing that after you have several pies in your face, for being lazy, tried a face save by saying that there are already pies in your face."
For being lazy? I read that in the newspaper. (Thanks Oregonian) I think I know what happened, they run a 'humor' blurb in the comics section called the 'The Edge'. I probably read it there and forgot where I got the story from.
As for saving face: I was wrong. BFD. Not like I'm sitting here saying "no no no, I swear it was true!" Heh. So yeah, it gets annoying when everybody and their mother thinks they're the first to tell me I was wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
"Lightwave availability strikes me as a pointless digression."
Hardly pointless. Replace Lightwave with.. oh.. any game ever made and suddenly a chord is struck with everybody who has a PC at home.
Be serious. People use their PC's to perform certain tasks. Windows has the best variety of mission critical apps out there. Linux has alternatives, but they're not always sufficient today.
It's great making your computer boot, but that's not what you bought it for.
"Summary Ley you can under wine with success... and they are porting it!"
We're months away from having the screamernet version (i.e. render only, you still need a Windows machine to set up the animation/modelling etc) and probably at least a year or two away from a Linux version.
Which is fine. If Linux is a good OS that'll run Lightwave a year or two from now then I'll be happy to evaluate it.
Just to be clear: I'm not saying Linux is worthless, I'm saying that this zealousy over it won't solve anybody's problems. As a matter of fact, it'll probably cause problems. Most of my company frequents Slashdot. Let's say they were taken in by the hype and adopted Linux. Guess what? Expectations are high, which means that every little problem will be blown out of proportion. Before you know it, everybody's anti-Linux.
We're already having that happen today. Some of the engineers have been moved to Linux, and they're fussing over every idiotic problem that Windows just doesn't have. The worst part is having to look up badly spelt commands in order to figure out what to do. They're having to make compromises in order to get through their day.
If this happens on a grand scale, then what? You get the bigwigs around companies everywhere saying "What a nightmare. I'll stick with the company that understands our needs best."
Slashdot'd be smart to pull back on these worthless debates. Raise the bar too high and Linux'll never be accepted.
"The obvious reason that Linux admins are better sysadmins (overall) and can admin more machines is because they're, er, mostly self-taught."
/..
Perhaps. Thing is though, Windows isn't exactly that hard to maintain. The company I work for has had between 15-20 people over the last 5 years and runs on a mostly NT-based network. Have we had our share of difficulties? Sure. Have we ever needed an admin to maintain it? No. Most problems have been resolved by the people who stumbled over them. We had a sysadmin up until a couple of years ago. When he left, I absorbed his responsibilities. Yet, I still have plenty of time to post on
I'm sure there's some truth to this in bigger companies, but Linux has been nothing but a problem for us here because the one person we have who can fix the problems is overloaded.
People could pay me money to install Linux, I still still can't use Lightwave on it today.
I mean seriously, the OS isn't the biggest issue when using computers at a business. There's apps and there's the people using it. One could make the argument that Macs are more expensive than Windows based machines, but some places still choose to use them.
I guess what I'm really saying is "Yah, whatever, it's still not a decisive argument."
"I'm glad some people finally understand that the battle isn't about markets or choosing a software license, but freedom. All to often people think that free markets are about markets, and not freedom. But just the opposite is true, when a society has healthy freedoms - the markets tend to take care of themselves."
One of the freedoms we have to accept is that MS is allowed to express their views on GPL.
...reclassify Animaniacs as Scifi. Remember that garage door opener that Yakko had that could turn women upside down?
... how obnoxious the USA is going to be when one of these Death Star things finally gets built.
"Yes, I've played it. I own it. The story is somewhat different, and there are some neat mini levels (with the acapella original SMB theme, sweet!), but overall there's very little to distinguish Super Mario Sunshine from Super Mario 64 "
I would disagree. I'm not a Mario zealot by any means, but I was pleasantly surprised with this game. The addition of the watergun was no small feature. There's a lot more to that was added to that game as a result of the watergun than just another feature. It was another dimension of game play. I doubt I'll convince you of that in this post, but it really did make your mind shift gears to play. Though I will happily concede that Sunshine built from Mario 64's success, but the satisfaction from playing that game is significantly different from what you got from Mario 64.
"Super Mario Sunshine, while still a good game in its own right, just doesn't follow the trend..."
I'm sorry, I just don't agree. Think about what it takes to get through Mario Sunshine and then think about what it takes to get through Mario 64. Hopefully the differences will start to appear. It's kind of like comparing Super Mario 3 to the original Super Mario Bros. Still the same foundation, but a good deal of depth was added just by adding a few new rules to the game.
"Then again, given what Nintendo has been doing, rehashing older Mario games on the GBA..."
Sorry to be nitpicky here, but that's not a rehash. Sonic 1 to Sonic 2, that's a rehash. This is a port.
I'm not arguing with you just for the fun of it. I felt the same way you did when I first fired up Sunshine. It wasn't until I started getting deeper into the game that I realized there was quite a bit more to do in it. Would I describe it as revolutionary? Nope. I'm not saying it's that different. I do feel, though, that it stands very well. It makes me very curious what Zelda's going to be like...
Cheers.
"Sure, but it's nothing new. It's just Mario 64 with fancier graphics and a water gun. That doesn't mean it's not fun, just that it's nothing new."
Have you even played it? That's like saying: "Star Trek II? It's just Star Trek I with a villain and explosions."
"And people wonder why it is so hard to make money in the computer game industry...how many people, getting paid how much, have worked for so long to make this game? What are the chances it will come even close to breaking even? If every person that owned a computer bought a copy of this game, at the insane price it would have to be, would that even be enough?It has been said before but bears repeating: the games of yesteryear had something that all these new games, with their fancy graphics and supposedly advanced AIs, still can't seem to replace. Repeat after us Mr. Game developers: it's all the gameplay."
I wonder what Blizzard would say to that.
" What I'm waiting for is a machine powerful enough to calculate the DNA sequences for artificial life."
Yeah, they should just build that instead of doing these incremental speed increases.
"It has come to the attention of many of the affluent SUV owners that low-income people and students and other undesirables drive economical cars and drive many miles on not much gasoline and are thus not paying their fair share of gasoline taxes and are thereby beating the system."
There's been some discussion on the radio that what's sparking this idea is that hybrid cars are getting more and more popular.
I think this is an amusing adoption of technology, but I don't think these guys understand the practicality of what they're trying to do.
Part of the larger problem in Oregon is that we have no sales tax. The property owners bear that burden. Now we're having revenue troubles, so anytime somebody suggests a sales tax everybody get's their panties in a bunch.
The result? Now they're talking about an entertainment tax. Nobody wants that either!
I think it's funny as hell, but I'm planning to move out of this state this year.
"It does explain why they're doing this, it just doesn't make sense."
In the 'Going Through your Garbage' story yesterday, I made this post and got modded as off-topic. Is it funny now?
In all seriousness though, this is just a taste of the weekly radio comedy we Oregonians are exposed to. I'm definitely looking forward to moving out of this state.
"It's new years eve! Do you people really not have anything more exciting to be doing than reading Slashdot? You'd never catch me posting on a geek news site on the party night of the year. Ever."
A user has given a Hypocrite (-1) moderation to your comment
" By putting it on the curb, you have shown that you want the city to come and take it away."
I disagree. People should be able to discard all evidence of wrong doing so that they can maintain their freedom!
Okay, bad time for a joke like that. I half agree. Ever hear of a 'search warrant'? Due process? If the city has a search warrant to go through my garbage, that's fine. The ability to do it willy nilly is wrong. Fortunately, WW proved to the right people why it's wrong. It's nosey.
There are matters of privacy here. What if they found a pair of panties a little too small for the politician's wife? Funny? Yes. Our business? No.
Earthquakes, family killers, terrorist camps, crashing helicopters, missing girls...
Oregon just can't stay out of the news. HELLO? We got this big crazy state just south of us! Go report on them!!
... NX-802.11
It can only do 5 megabits, but'll we be free from broadcast flags!
(Okay, that Enterprise joke might be a little too obscure. I've had too much coffee.)
"This seems really, but would it be enjoyable to watch? A lot of art is just "hey, cool!" and then is put on a shelf. This really cool idea is only really cool because it's so original, it will never be cool again."
There's hope. Beavis and Butthead's decaying animation style still lives on.
... Robert Downey Jr.?
"Well, having a linux distrib in your wallet is much more attracting to the ladies than, say, a condom."
One has to admire that the information stored on the card will last much longer than the information stored in the condom.
"How about a pizza company refusing to accept orders from a paticular motel because often noone will admit to ordering there? Stay at a different motel."
Um, exactly how much research are you expecting people to do on motels? Call them up and say "Can I order pizza there?"
"If you are using an ISP that does not enforce acceptable use policies restricting unsolicited email, you are supporting spaming activity."
As opposed to what? Exactly how is one supposed to go about finding out about how effective an ISP's attempts to filter spam are? The biggest problem with your argument is that spammers always change how they operate.
Sorry, but your answers struck me as oversimplified and unhelpful. How that was modded up as 'insightful' I'll never know.
"The correct anatomical term is the 'chin-rest'."
Okay, I have nothing interesting to add to this conversation, so I'll just share a joke that this comment reminded me of.
What do you get when you have nuts on your wall?
Walnuts.
What do you get when you have nuts on your chest?
Chestnuts.
What do you get when you have nuts on your chin?
I givmf Upfmmfm!
"Sorry, that's not allowed on Slashdot. Could you two find some other misunderstanding to argue about?"
Okay: Your name is spelled wrong.
" He's not saying that to provoke a reaction, he's saying it because he's dumb and doesn't know how wrong he is."
I think he is saying it to provoke a reaction. I can't imagine somebody would be sitting there saying "I hate PVRs... Hmm.. well the only ding I have against them is drive noise."
And no, 'You Idiot!!!' is trolling. Flamebait is when you say, no matter how right you are, that Windows 2000 is a better desktop OS than any distro of Linux.
"I find it amusing that after you have several pies in your face, for being lazy, tried a face save by saying that there are already pies in your face."
For being lazy? I read that in the newspaper. (Thanks Oregonian) I think I know what happened, they run a 'humor' blurb in the comics section called the 'The Edge'. I probably read it there and forgot where I got the story from.
As for saving face: I was wrong. BFD. Not like I'm sitting here saying "no no no, I swear it was true!" Heh. So yeah, it gets annoying when everybody and their mother thinks they're the first to tell me I was wrong.