While I would agree in principal, I am currently playing Monkey Island 4 (who came up with that interface should be shot), I don't agree here. I am not going to say it runs fine on my hardware, it does and it is only marginally better.
Instead I am going to wonder how the hell the original works. Bridges are 3D construcs by devinition. Certainly building them would require you to think in 3D as well. Would be odd to then be forced to do this in a 2D world.
The game really works. I am not sure if it is worth the price they ask but then I didn't pay for it. Sue me.
So I think that for this type of game you are out of luck. Kinda like complaining that all these new fangled talkie adventures seem to assume you got a soundcard:) But really if it runs fine on my slightly better system perhaps something else is wrong.
Oh and nice graphics for the opcoming version. Now if only they made the interface slighly more this centurie it would be a great puzzle game for everyone. Oh and include some tech tutorials. I learned some tech in school. Most people I know didn't.
The world for a long time considered racism perfectly normal. While america was fighting to save the world from oppression and bring freedom to all of mankind, it was perfectly normal for blacks to be lynched back home.
To right this wrong some extreme measures had to be taken. Black childeren had to be escorted to school by a huge force. Wasn't this unfair? White kids did not get such an escort to school not even those who were bullied.
Yes it was "unfair" this threated black and whites differently but to right one extreme injustice an other extreme had to be used as a countermeasure.
Same goes for possitive discrimination. Sure it is unfair to hire a person of one race over the other. But is/was neccasry to right a wrong.
That is sadly the case of the world. The longer and more extreme a wrong is allowed to go on the more extreme the countermeasure must be.
If a child commits the minor act of say vandalizing a road sign that the countermeasure can be a simple and light punishment to counter the crime. But if this does not take place and the child goes on to vandalize then the needed correction needs to become thougher and thougher.
So MS has established itself as the dominant Desktop leader. It has driven the competition away often illegally, or is there really anyone here who thinks MS was the innocent party in the recent BeOS story? If this had been corrected early on, say OS/2 had been succesfull then little would needed to be done. Perhaps a small slap on the wrist. A goverment contract to say equip schools with a good mix so not everyone is weened on MS and all would be well. This did not take place.
No company can hope to compete with MS anymore. Not just in terms of money, look at the gamecube x-box battle where MS is just losing money and can afford it, but because MS does not fight fair. It controls the PC makers, OEM deals, and it controls the exchange of information through office.
So how is anyone going to compete? The only ones who can are goverments. They got the money, MS may be huge for a company but compared with countries it is small fries. And they got the agenda. The current MS monopoly is not exactly the best situation for the citizens of these countries. Responsible goverments should always make sure companies do not harm the intrest of their citizens. Remember its is citizens that make a countrie not companies. Well at least they do outside the US.
So my point is that this is simply the only way to break the current stalemate. Try to remember that for the rest of the world the company is not holy and funding MS is not smart business.
As for your comment on linux being to technical, that is certainly true. And who do think has the kind of money and resources and long term intrest to change that?
As for conflict of intrests. There are none. It is not in asias intrest to allow MS to control the desktop. Remember asia countries got to be fair to their own people. Not to foreign companies. It worked great for US.
A private finance competion is simply no linger possible. It has been tried and MS has used its size and unfair business practives to kill every attempt. Now they are facing opposition they can not bully. Excuse me while I smirk.
Awh, how sad. Poor little MS gets some competition. Except that it is not some tiny startup who can be easily kept out but a trillion dollar part of the world. It sounds like you are feeling sorry for the school bully who suddenly finds himself getting beaten senseless by a 400 pound gorilla. Personally I am going hope this is going to be like any decent western. MS doing the.45 dance.
MS screwed BeOS now they are going to get screwed. Bees should not complain about being stung, thiefs should not complain about things being stolen and MS should not complain about facing competition with a bottemless warchest.
MS has had for the last decade more then enough money and resources to make themselves popular. Instead they have opted to get more and more money and make themselves hated and despised. Now they are reaping the rewards. More and more people and even whole countries are refusing to deal on their terms anymore.
It is sad that it takes goverments to put up some serious competition but that is the way it works. With small companies it is possible but with say the car industrie competition came only about with goverment sponsored companies. Japan and korea spring to mind but also europe were the marshall plans, US money after WWII, was used to setup factories that would have been very hard to do with private money. For the current steel wars, the dutch "hoogovens" got its start from US money:)
Sometimes it takes goverment intervention to dictate changes in the market. Don't forget that in the rest of the world politics are not entirly decided by corporate sponsors. Goverment sponsored promotion of certain products over established products are hardly new. Eco-tax on petrol while subsidising natural gas. Tax breaks for enviromental production, coupons for low power consumption electronics.
But back to your post. MS facing competition from huge goverments is unfair. Small business facing competition from huge MS is fair. "Call for Mr Kibo. Bill Gates wants you to report for his 4 o'clock asslicking."
Sure the idea has merits. If they ever can the installed base of the ground. Say that every PC in world is enabled in this way. Then yes I could take this light device with me and while waiting at the airport work at a supplied terminal. While in the aircraft use the PC in the seat to work. Then while at the client use their PC's to hold my presentation.
Slight snag. This is not likely to happen. Most companies don't even like their own employees to attach hardware to the network let alone complete strangers. Let alone a black box device. We all heard the horror storie about people installing modded consoles in the walls to comprimise security at big offices. This make it even easier.
It sounds to me like kermit. To those of you who do not know what kermit is it was a mobile phone that only worked in hotsports. So it worked for a few years while everyone used payphones or carphones until cellphones became cheap. Just as now everyone will use something like a USB pendrive/iPod style/external HD device or pda/laptop. The first are cheap and light and will usually work. The second are expensive heavy but at least can work on their own.
Perhaps this will work for big companies in highly specialized situations. I just can't think of any where existing tech like the ones I mentioned wouldn't do just as well.
If you see it as a race we have the following situation. It is a three horse race with Gamecube and X-box currently battling it out for 2nd and 3rd place. PS2 has long since finished and is now enjoying a good rubbing down and a selection of the finest oats. In the vip gallery is standing the PC. It doesn't take part in races since all its competition died decades ago. It is chatting with Gameboy Advance who still wants to race except that all its competitors drop over before they get to the starting block. It only has its own siblings to beat wich just gets a little boring.
Now why is everyone so obessed with those 2 losers battling it out? Sure you may enjoy your gamecube or X-box but you are like the person who still says C64 all the way.
I still don't understand one thing. Why are so few games cross-platform. Isn't it so that the greatest cost in making a game is the creation of the world/art not the coding of the engine itself? If this is so porting the engine should be trivial compared to the total development cost. For the real world see how many cars are not made into rightside drive versions for countries like england. Or different voltages. Or different measurement systems.
The "revenue" is in not pissing of your fans who pay through the nose for your merchandise. Read up on how Star Trek, despite the fact that it was cancelled after the third season, became this juggernaut License.
Perhaps because of all the fan made work?
So instead of looking really bad by trying to sue some pennyless students for being hardcore fans who will probably watch the movies dozen of times, buy all the books, they look good while loosing nothing.
Their own games are unaffected. Mods are a tiny percentage of the gaming market.
Sounds like a nice idea. After all there are executable images and movies. No not virusses. This was in dos days when an image viewer was not by default available. They just were an exe that displayed the content itself. Problem is platform independence. Only java could really do that. And java on windows is hardly a given. (not sure what the current score is on Sun VS Microsoft)
Hosting it will be a big problem with Home machines.
Still not a bad idea. It could certainly work well after all many people who do run windows do not even have office and wordpad is a joke as it can't read a fraction of.doc versions.
Of course it would be great if they would build upon work already done. Be it Linux BSD Tron Minix or whatever. Even if this is nothing more then an attempt to get Gates to fly over to lower prices it is good news.
Great news. With the funding of three big goverments Linux gets all the little things that volunteers are bad at. Documentation, help files, support, QA, easy of use, standarization.
Good news. They create a new opensource OS. With a big portion of the world then not using windows standards for exchanghing information will have to be set and obeyed by all sites unless they want to stop communicating. So no more MS only sites. No more single platform document formats. Note that PDF can remain closed as it takes the time to port its aps to the different platforms.
Okay news. They create a closed source OS. Pretty much the same as above but without the benefit that any improvements can be used by the whole world.
Not bad news. This never pans out china keeps working on red flag, japan keeps using tron. At least it shows that goverments are getting fed up with the current situation. The longest journey begins with a single step. Let this be the first one.
Please understand that I do use windows and think it to be a wonderful OS, for certain tasks. As a game machine it is without equal. Sure games crash but then they push the system to its limits and lets face it game producers are hardly know to produce bug free code itself.
For every other task I have gotten fed up with microsoft. I am now running a 2003 machine and it is just as crash prone as xp as 98 as 95 as 3.11 and as dos was. My linux desktop has not had single crash. Oh opera crashes all the time but I do a "killall opera; opera" and it is back exactly where it crashed. Try that with IE or for that matter with Mozilla.
I don't want to see MS fail or driven into the ground. I want market forces to force them to stop adding eye candy and now fix the bloody core itself. Has anyone else noticed that 2003 wich supposdly should have new buffer overflow protection has so far been affected the same as all the other NT's out there?
Perhaps you can compare it to the american car industry wich kept making its cars flashier with more and more chrome attached while they became less reliable and ever greater gass guslers. Enter the japanese with tiny boring cars that worked and they forced the americans to finally change.
So the east to the rescue again. I will belief it when I see it, they haven't even gotten a logo yet everyone knows opensource needs a cute logo, but for now I prefer to be positive.
mmm What about the penguin from Evangelion, Pen Pen as the logo? Pen Pen
And you are right, that is a joke. Linus Torvald never wrote the linux the kernel as competition to anyone or anything. He wrote it for fun to see if he could pull it off. He released it to see if anyone wanted to help him get some utitlites running on it.
The only OS mentioned is Minix and he refers to it that if you are tired of everything just running under Minix you might give his kernel a try. Hardly a rousing sales pitch except to geeks.
That is btw Microsofts biggest problem with linux. Where MS got to meet growth targets and keep market share. Linux is free of all that. If one person still enjoys tinkering with it it has met 100% of its goals.
Remember that it is companies like Redhat and Suse that can fail. Linux cannot fail. Neat isn't it.
Disclaimer I am talking about the kernel here. The GNU part has of course always had higher ambitions according to its founders.
This sounds to me like just bad management. Sorry but noneone ever claimed windows was capable of doing everything. Graphics especially are apperantly a weak point, don't use it myself so this is hear say.
Those big movie studios who are moving to linux even on the design machines use their own tools or at least heavily modified versions.
A good rollout would first have tested the software on a cheap machine maybe someones home pc. Not ordered a couple of dual xeon's in the hope it will work out. And debian not supporting the printer may well be true but this too should have been tested for.
As to using debian. Lets face it it is not exactly one of the most up to date distros out there. Maybe a more uptodate distro like say any except debian would have the support:)
So your experience sounds really like bad planning. Would you be as suprised if you bought a bunch of iMacs and then found they did not meet expetations?
Moral of the story. Try before you buy.
Oh and I hate americans. Did a price check on dual Xeon 3ghz for 725 dollar? Damn we are being overcharged here in europe. I could barely get the motherboard for that. Sigh.
Note the I. This is my experience. I am not claiming this is typical I may in fact be the exception. Anyway.
I grew up with C64 -> MS-DOS -> Windows. When it was time for me to get into the unixes I first had to work with an AIX with all the man pages removed. Thrust me working with a unix book to figure out a badly configured server with mission critical software running on it does not endear you to a system. Fortuanly I was saved when I learned that there was a support contract for it and the people from IBM really saved my ass. Finding the bloody machine was the hardest thing in getting the man pages on it:)
Oh perhaps I should explain that the company had lets its unix admin go and failed to hire a replacement since support should be able to handle it. In the end it was I a complete newbie who was landed with the job just because I was knowlegdable about the database on it.
However I was not soured with IBM/AIX because of the excellent support I got, wich of course the company had to pay for but then they should have hired unix admin.
Later on at an ISP I wanted to learn more about unixes and of course I went to ask. There were two camps. BSD's on the one hand. Linux on the other. Let me just say that the BSDers I met are the greatest bunch of selfrighteous assholes I have ever met. I needed to setup up and FTP and didn't want to use windows for it. BSDers, FTP is insecure. Linuxers, Okay you can best choose this daemon for it since it has been tested by us in an earlier project oh and here are the installation notes we took then. Guess wich answer helped me get the job done?
Where linux people always seemed willing to help me out, as indeed the solaris and windows people, the BSD just seemed to think that unless you managed to figure out a system from scratch you suck. I have heard other people complain about this as well. Gentoo fans say they stayed away from BSD apt-get because they found the atmosphere on the forums downright hostile.
Sure we got linux zealots but so far I never met them in real life. I learn from other linux users and nowadays sometimes manage to point a trick or two out to other users. It feels like a far better community to be in.
To be fair I only met about a grand total of 5-6 bsders, so it could have been just them but that doesn't change the fact that 100% of all BSDers I met, all of them needed to develop some people skills. I am sure there must be helpfull or even just friendly BSD users out there. I just never met them.
And this I think answers your question. BSD and in particular its users just never seem capable of appealing to outsiders. And the only way to grow is to get those outsiders. You scare everyone away so you don't grow so noone hears about you so you get all grumpy so even the few that do hear about you get scared away in a vicious circle.
From your tone by the way you seem really pissed off. You say BSD is superior, but fail to give proof. You claim it is more mature but as I said the attitude given off by BSD users seem to suggest they are anything but. This too gets annoying. It is like the eternal debate on wich distro is best. Answer the best is the one you like.
So lighten up. After all apple saw the light didn't they? Try to be a little bit more friendly to newbies who really want to learn but have to ask stupidly annoying questions at first. If you can't or don't want to deal with that then take comfort that you are running a truly secure system, despite that fact you never seem able to prove this, and that all the dweebs morons and losers gravitate to linux like the braindead zombies they are.
In the meantime we enjoy the community of getting things done and helping each other out that for some reason grew up around linux and we welcome with open arms any who escaped from the BSD gulag and nurture them wich friendly users and a cute logo.
The first is a game you can download and train with. It is an okay animated slighly odd to use fight game. The second is lot less clear but the ads for it make it looks a bit like the total war series. Lots of formations of soldiers fighting it out. (nice animation)
But yeah I think that current games make extremly poor TV entertainment. But then again quake? That is like a drunk punchup compared to a thightly regulated boxing match. Just try to make a running commentary on a quake match
Player [34_the()_[t53]] just picked up the gun. oh and got fragged. and he is back and he frags that guy and he gets fragged.
So though luck guys but it looks like you have the following options
Get a real job and see this as a hobby with occasinal perks when you win a couple of bucks. Just like any other hobby.
Make the game more attractive to view for bystanders. Lose the stupid nicks to something people who have had sex can read and just try not to be complete assholes. Top soccer players may get away with it. Niche sports players can't. Remember entertainment means entertaining people, not looking down on them.
Turn semi-pro and make your living teaching others how to play. How do you think most golfers make their living?
So in short I find this article to be in the trend of "Hey we made millions in the dotcom days. But now people seem to expect us to make real products". Yeah cry me a river. Oh well at least they are not aimbot cheaters.
You are of course right and as the orignal poster has commented he has indeed paid for it according to the spirit of the software wich he uses. Wich is good. I just wanted to clarify that for most people they tend to use an awfull lot of software that they didn't pay for and that this seems to be widely accepted as normal.
For example I yet have to go into an office where I don't find a winzip way way way past the shareware version expire time. But that don't count according to even very large firms (telecoms) because it is only shareware. (no bsa to fight for them)
Having reread my own post I worded it far to strongly. Sorry.
People don't like to pay for stuff. We often have to but if we can somehow find a way to get stuff for "free" we will take it. In real life companies know this and often use "free" gifts to get us to part with out money. We are greedy and we want it all for nothing.
Very little can de done against it. So the real question is how do other companies like say supermarkets get us to pay for their products. Yesterday on my way to the dentist I walked past the back of a supermarket and totally unprotected where stending several loafs of bread. I could have saved myself A. some money B. the time standing in the que. I did not take the loaf. Why the risk was not worth it for me.
With software however we feel that "stealing" it is not so much a problem when we consider it stealing at all. You think differently? Cute from a guy who calls his image browser software "abc" I am sure acdsee has something to say about this. Software is easily "stolen" and the risks are non-existent.
So the answer? Well look to a different way of doing business. Opera, you got their icon on your page, seems to be surviving despite the fact that it gives its full browser away for free. Oh yeah they got add banners. Even if you are to lazy to find a serial for it you probably filter out the ads at the proxy.
I don't think it is really possible to escape pirates anymore. The cracking has become so fast that games are out cracked before they are in stores. How is a little shop like you possibly going to compete. So go the way of some game companies. Don't bother. Quake without any protection nonetheless was a huge seller. It can be done. But try to stay away from overzealous copyprotection.
Why? Cause the only ones you hurt with all the stuff like serials and calling home functionality are the legitemate users. Not a single company so far has succeeded in keeping popular software out of the warez scene. Not microsoft, not acdsee and neither will you.
Concentrate instead on making the program superior to anyone elses. Then hope that enough people will simply buy it because they find "stealing" wrong to support you. Plenty of free software projects get funding without any obligation to contribute anything.
Remember there is no law wich says you got to be able to make a living. If this doesn't pay your bills then though. Get a J.O.B.
But the real question to you is. Did you pay for opera? Did you make a donation to Apache and all the other OSS software you are using? In short did you fully pay for all software you ever used? No then shut the fuck up. You steal we steal. If you did, then give yourselve a pat on the back, there will no doubt be a place for you in heaven, with just a little bit of hell for infringing on acdsee's trademark.:P
I can see you making a mistake right there. "Everyday I wake up I have the urge to earn the most I can...."
So money is the only thing a dad (I presime you are male) can give to a child? Nice. You don't have to earn as much as possible. Enough will do quit nicely. If you are lucky enough to be able to provide a decent living for your family AND be able to spend time at home with your kid(s) then choose this over earning the maximum salery overtime can bring.
Sure kids love that really expensive toy. But the toy is forgotten in a years time. You missing their team match is never ever forgotten.
Only PHB think when they are about to die that they would have wanted to spend more time in the office.
Elections are a waste of time. I am sure that if I got to gether with some smart people I could easily select the perfect leader with the right policies that certianly any rightthinking person would want for this country.
For some reason however dictatorships are not welcomed. Odd really according to this articles reasoning people would enjoy having their choice taken away from them.
Yes there are a shitload of windows/desktop managers for linux. The two major ones Gnome and KDE (in no particular order I prefer enlightenment). It is a little thing called choice. I am sure there are plenty of people who prefer windows who say why are there so many different OSes? Wouldn't it be better if everyone worked on one?
You like KDE you say. Great for you. Now do a little history check. Was KDE the first desktop manager for linux? No? Then you mean that KDE yourselve broke that people should select 1 standard and stick to that. But no KDE came about because some people thought they could do something different and better then what was already out there. This is how things evolve and change. By people trying something different from the already established.
People who complain about Linux not being able to compete with windows because it is not windows enough alike for me are missing the fundamental reason for linux existence. Freedom to thinker. Linux, blessed be his name, did not write linux to overthrow Bill Gates. He wrote it because he thought "what the hey, lets see if I can do this"
The orignal post
Linux was a unix for the intel platform. Mmm, kinda like minix then. So should according to your reasoning he simply have put his efforts in this project?
Freedom means allowing people to do things that ain't neccesarly in your own best intrest. Or for that matter their own. Every single invention ever made was made because somebody was not satisfied with the status quo and went outside the accepted solutions to fix it.
For those worrying about Linux not competing with MS, get a life. MS tried and failed with xenix. It then took them a decade to finally get accepted in the office and until a few years ago if you had suggested putting windows in server room people would be telling you that those make it way to easy for burglars to enter.
Is the goal of the free software community to force everyone to use Linux/Gnu/KDE or is it to allow people freedom to work with computers in their own way without being told by somekind of central authority what is best for them?
I now use gentoo, why? Not because it is faster or easier. But because it at least still uses the same boring old text mode bootup that tells me what the fuck MY system is doing. I use enlightenment because it manages my windows without wasting space on taskbars I don't want. My computer, my linux, my freedom. Rememeber in soviet russia/corporate america/gutless europe your desktop is chosen for you:)
Well you know those cute thight young girls that are asking you if there is anyway they could increase their grades? Guess what? They are not asking for study tips.
Oh please. Not this whole sex-object means it is targetted at men. Proof? Every fucking shampoo aimed at women contains a gorgeous naked babe. Why not show a naked guy?
Women are far less troubled by naked boobies, after all they see them pretty much everyday. They are used to it and unlikely to lose all higher brain functions when things start jiggling. That doesn't stop the fact that the most favored addition to Neverwinter Nights is an erotic adventure created by a female. Women can be just as perverted, in my experience even more so, then men.
So games really don't need to change all that much unless you are a sexist pig who believes that all men want brainless testorone pumpers and all women want fluffy duffy talkie feelie type games.
Men and women can meet each other in the middle and together enjoy games. Women will just shrug off the overlarge boobs in say every RPG ever made with a "boys" and concentrate on enjoying the game. That at least is my experience. I have noted that none of the 2 females I introduced to "The longest journey" commented on april's normal physical build. I noticed it, to them it was just a minor detail, just as they did not get a kick out of seeing her in her undies:P wich means they just enjoyed the game and let the fanservice flow past them.
Still it is amazing to believe one in four gamers is now a woman. Must be going to the wrong lan-parties.
You and another post mention GTA III as an original game. What exactly does the III stand for again? The third in the series you say? Oh, hardly original then is it? There have been other games like it before. Drive around perform "missions".
Perhaps I just put to much weight on the word original. But I expect it to mean slightly more then we added a tiny little extra. You have not invented a new food by adding a slice of ehm cucumber to a hamburger.
As it is there are therefore precious few "original" games. The best we can hope for is a well done game. Personally I am still hoping for a game that adds nothing original, only takes the good bits from games that came before and leaves out the bad.
I am tired of playing RPG's in wich I have to pick up every little bit of loot myself, didn't dungeon siege show how it could be done? I am tired of FPS wich always start you off with a pistol against the world and you never get proper armor and weapons while saving the entire world. I am tired of realtime strategy games that always have me just a unit or two behind on the tech ladder compared to the enemy who I have to fight while saving the economy.
So for me the perfect new game doesn't have to come up with anything new. Just fix the damned stuff that is broken. Now that would be original.
Yup. If they really really mean this is it could be great. But I am thinking deeper. Fans of red dwarf may know that the creators refer to a radio play with pretty the same plot from wich some material was used. Red Dward eps are easy to come by illegally, those radio plays? Forget it. Now all that stuff online? Drooool.
And yes I know that this probably won't and can't happen, the storage required to put it all oneline would be gigantic even if you compress it for online use.
Still I prefer to be optimistic. If and when this happens my download connection is going to glow red!
I am sorry, but quake as a hard to learn game? Are you sure you are feeling alright? I have explained to GIRLS, well known to be avid-nongamers, how to play this in less then a minute.
I suppose I should be fair, if I hear some people talk about quake you would think it is the most realistic combat simulator yet build. These are the same assholes who immidialty frag someone standing still while they get the key layout explained and then go "HAHA Noob!". This is the real reason few new people pick it up, because we are unwilling the give newbies a gently introduction. Personally I always restrict myself to the lowest weapon and don't pick up stuff like health until new players have gotten reasonably good at it. So this way I managed to get several avid non-players involved in weekly tournaments.
The hard thing about quake is finding a non-asshole teacher and playing group. Not picking it up.
Yes and such licenses are totally and utterly worthless. We been through the shrinkwrap licenses and they don't stand up in court. This guy used a paid for product from service that didn't live up to his expectations. This is nothing different then a garage failing to fix your car or an the post office losing your mail. It is now up to the courts to decide if they find that this is just acceptable risk or that the company is accountable for the loss.
We need to stop threating computers as somehow magically excempt from normal law. A game is still a product and I should be able to have certain expectation of a game when I buy it. Just like any other product I buy or in the case of an online game rent.
He will probably lose however. Why? Same reason you can't sue for lost mail. The cost of sending a letter is so low that you can't possible expect guaranteed delivery. If you want that pay more for the well guaranteed delivery option. So I think a judge will rule that the price of the game was not so high as to ensure absolute reliability.
mmm, yeah. Sounds like SCO is thinking along the same lines of winning the trial. Now if only we could get say someone from the opposition to also have a change to conduct something like an interview during the trial. Nah, that is will never happen.
Unless I missed something kazaa is windows only. And windows by default uses its own mediaplayer as the standard program for playing MP3s.
If you download an mp3, get it of a cd, you will open it and play it with MS installed apps.
So how exactly would a complete and utter noob get to install kazaa to play an Mp3? I know far more people that are convinved that Windows Media Player is the only way to play their music, and who think that since it has windows in front of it Linux can't play Mp3s.
Oh and yes they are of course right. Kernels are well known for not playing music:)
Slashdot Mirror
Instead I am going to wonder how the hell the original works. Bridges are 3D construcs by devinition. Certainly building them would require you to think in 3D as well. Would be odd to then be forced to do this in a 2D world.
The game really works. I am not sure if it is worth the price they ask but then I didn't pay for it. Sue me.
So I think that for this type of game you are out of luck. Kinda like complaining that all these new fangled talkie adventures seem to assume you got a soundcard :) But really if it runs fine on my slightly better system perhaps something else is wrong.
Oh and nice graphics for the opcoming version. Now if only they made the interface slighly more this centurie it would be a great puzzle game for everyone. Oh and include some tech tutorials. I learned some tech in school. Most people I know didn't.
The world for a long time considered racism perfectly normal. While america was fighting to save the world from oppression and bring freedom to all of mankind, it was perfectly normal for blacks to be lynched back home.
To right this wrong some extreme measures had to be taken. Black childeren had to be escorted to school by a huge force. Wasn't this unfair? White kids did not get such an escort to school not even those who were bullied.
Yes it was "unfair" this threated black and whites differently but to right one extreme injustice an other extreme had to be used as a countermeasure.
Same goes for possitive discrimination. Sure it is unfair to hire a person of one race over the other. But is/was neccasry to right a wrong.
That is sadly the case of the world. The longer and more extreme a wrong is allowed to go on the more extreme the countermeasure must be.
If a child commits the minor act of say vandalizing a road sign that the countermeasure can be a simple and light punishment to counter the crime. But if this does not take place and the child goes on to vandalize then the needed correction needs to become thougher and thougher.
So MS has established itself as the dominant Desktop leader. It has driven the competition away often illegally, or is there really anyone here who thinks MS was the innocent party in the recent BeOS story? If this had been corrected early on, say OS/2 had been succesfull then little would needed to be done. Perhaps a small slap on the wrist. A goverment contract to say equip schools with a good mix so not everyone is weened on MS and all would be well. This did not take place.
No company can hope to compete with MS anymore. Not just in terms of money, look at the gamecube x-box battle where MS is just losing money and can afford it, but because MS does not fight fair. It controls the PC makers, OEM deals, and it controls the exchange of information through office.
So how is anyone going to compete? The only ones who can are goverments. They got the money, MS may be huge for a company but compared with countries it is small fries. And they got the agenda. The current MS monopoly is not exactly the best situation for the citizens of these countries. Responsible goverments should always make sure companies do not harm the intrest of their citizens. Remember its is citizens that make a countrie not companies. Well at least they do outside the US.
So my point is that this is simply the only way to break the current stalemate. Try to remember that for the rest of the world the company is not holy and funding MS is not smart business.
As for your comment on linux being to technical, that is certainly true. And who do think has the kind of money and resources and long term intrest to change that?
As for conflict of intrests. There are none. It is not in asias intrest to allow MS to control the desktop. Remember asia countries got to be fair to their own people. Not to foreign companies. It worked great for US.
A private finance competion is simply no linger possible. It has been tried and MS has used its size and unfair business practives to kill every attempt. Now they are facing opposition they can not bully. Excuse me while I smirk.
Lol and your email adress is hotmail?
Anyway.
Awh, how sad. Poor little MS gets some competition. Except that it is not some tiny startup who can be easily kept out but a trillion dollar part of the world. It sounds like you are feeling sorry for the school bully who suddenly finds himself getting beaten senseless by a 400 pound gorilla. Personally I am going hope this is going to be like any decent western. MS doing the .45 dance.
MS screwed BeOS now they are going to get screwed. Bees should not complain about being stung, thiefs should not complain about things being stolen and MS should not complain about facing competition with a bottemless warchest.
MS has had for the last decade more then enough money and resources to make themselves popular. Instead they have opted to get more and more money and make themselves hated and despised. Now they are reaping the rewards. More and more people and even whole countries are refusing to deal on their terms anymore.
It is sad that it takes goverments to put up some serious competition but that is the way it works. With small companies it is possible but with say the car industrie competition came only about with goverment sponsored companies. Japan and korea spring to mind but also europe were the marshall plans, US money after WWII, was used to setup factories that would have been very hard to do with private money. For the current steel wars, the dutch "hoogovens" got its start from US money :)
Sometimes it takes goverment intervention to dictate changes in the market. Don't forget that in the rest of the world politics are not entirly decided by corporate sponsors. Goverment sponsored promotion of certain products over established products are hardly new. Eco-tax on petrol while subsidising natural gas. Tax breaks for enviromental production, coupons for low power consumption electronics.
But back to your post. MS facing competition from huge goverments is unfair. Small business facing competition from huge MS is fair. "Call for Mr Kibo. Bill Gates wants you to report for his 4 o'clock asslicking."
Sure the idea has merits. If they ever can the installed base of the ground. Say that every PC in world is enabled in this way. Then yes I could take this light device with me and while waiting at the airport work at a supplied terminal. While in the aircraft use the PC in the seat to work. Then while at the client use their PC's to hold my presentation.
Slight snag. This is not likely to happen. Most companies don't even like their own employees to attach hardware to the network let alone complete strangers. Let alone a black box device. We all heard the horror storie about people installing modded consoles in the walls to comprimise security at big offices. This make it even easier.
It sounds to me like kermit. To those of you who do not know what kermit is it was a mobile phone that only worked in hotsports. So it worked for a few years while everyone used payphones or carphones until cellphones became cheap. Just as now everyone will use something like a USB pendrive/iPod style/external HD device or pda/laptop. The first are cheap and light and will usually work. The second are expensive heavy but at least can work on their own.
Perhaps this will work for big companies in highly specialized situations. I just can't think of any where existing tech like the ones I mentioned wouldn't do just as well.
Can anyone else perhaps point out what I missed?
Now why is everyone so obessed with those 2 losers battling it out? Sure you may enjoy your gamecube or X-box but you are like the person who still says C64 all the way.
I still don't understand one thing. Why are so few games cross-platform. Isn't it so that the greatest cost in making a game is the creation of the world/art not the coding of the engine itself? If this is so porting the engine should be trivial compared to the total development cost. For the real world see how many cars are not made into rightside drive versions for countries like england. Or different voltages. Or different measurement systems.
The "revenue" is in not pissing of your fans who pay through the nose for your merchandise. Read up on how Star Trek, despite the fact that it was cancelled after the third season, became this juggernaut License.
Perhaps because of all the fan made work?
So instead of looking really bad by trying to sue some pennyless students for being hardcore fans who will probably watch the movies dozen of times, buy all the books, they look good while loosing nothing.
Their own games are unaffected. Mods are a tiny percentage of the gaming market.
Hosting it will be a big problem with Home machines.
Still not a bad idea. It could certainly work well after all many people who do run windows do not even have office and wordpad is a joke as it can't read a fraction of .doc versions.
Please understand that I do use windows and think it to be a wonderful OS, for certain tasks. As a game machine it is without equal. Sure games crash but then they push the system to its limits and lets face it game producers are hardly know to produce bug free code itself.
For every other task I have gotten fed up with microsoft. I am now running a 2003 machine and it is just as crash prone as xp as 98 as 95 as 3.11 and as dos was. My linux desktop has not had single crash. Oh opera crashes all the time but I do a "killall opera; opera" and it is back exactly where it crashed. Try that with IE or for that matter with Mozilla.
I don't want to see MS fail or driven into the ground. I want market forces to force them to stop adding eye candy and now fix the bloody core itself. Has anyone else noticed that 2003 wich supposdly should have new buffer overflow protection has so far been affected the same as all the other NT's out there?
Perhaps you can compare it to the american car industry wich kept making its cars flashier with more and more chrome attached while they became less reliable and ever greater gass guslers. Enter the japanese with tiny boring cars that worked and they forced the americans to finally change.
So the east to the rescue again. I will belief it when I see it, they haven't even gotten a logo yet everyone knows opensource needs a cute logo, but for now I prefer to be positive.
mmm What about the penguin from Evangelion, Pen Pen as the logo? Pen Pen
The only OS mentioned is Minix and he refers to it that if you are tired of everything just running under Minix you might give his kernel a try. Hardly a rousing sales pitch except to geeks.
That is btw Microsofts biggest problem with linux. Where MS got to meet growth targets and keep market share. Linux is free of all that. If one person still enjoys tinkering with it it has met 100% of its goals.
Remember that it is companies like Redhat and Suse that can fail. Linux cannot fail. Neat isn't it.
Disclaimer I am talking about the kernel here. The GNU part has of course always had higher ambitions according to its founders.
Those big movie studios who are moving to linux even on the design machines use their own tools or at least heavily modified versions.
A good rollout would first have tested the software on a cheap machine maybe someones home pc. Not ordered a couple of dual xeon's in the hope it will work out. And debian not supporting the printer may well be true but this too should have been tested for.
As to using debian. Lets face it it is not exactly one of the most up to date distros out there. Maybe a more uptodate distro like say any except debian would have the support :)
So your experience sounds really like bad planning. Would you be as suprised if you bought a bunch of iMacs and then found they did not meet expetations?
Moral of the story. Try before you buy.
Oh and I hate americans. Did a price check on dual Xeon 3ghz for 725 dollar? Damn we are being overcharged here in europe. I could barely get the motherboard for that. Sigh.
Note the I. This is my experience. I am not claiming this is typical I may in fact be the exception. Anyway.
I grew up with C64 -> MS-DOS -> Windows. When it was time for me to get into the unixes I first had to work with an AIX with all the man pages removed. Thrust me working with a unix book to figure out a badly configured server with mission critical software running on it does not endear you to a system. Fortuanly I was saved when I learned that there was a support contract for it and the people from IBM really saved my ass. Finding the bloody machine was the hardest thing in getting the man pages on it :)
Oh perhaps I should explain that the company had lets its unix admin go and failed to hire a replacement since support should be able to handle it. In the end it was I a complete newbie who was landed with the job just because I was knowlegdable about the database on it.
However I was not soured with IBM/AIX because of the excellent support I got, wich of course the company had to pay for but then they should have hired unix admin.
Later on at an ISP I wanted to learn more about unixes and of course I went to ask. There were two camps. BSD's on the one hand. Linux on the other. Let me just say that the BSDers I met are the greatest bunch of selfrighteous assholes I have ever met. I needed to setup up and FTP and didn't want to use windows for it. BSDers, FTP is insecure. Linuxers, Okay you can best choose this daemon for it since it has been tested by us in an earlier project oh and here are the installation notes we took then. Guess wich answer helped me get the job done?
Where linux people always seemed willing to help me out, as indeed the solaris and windows people, the BSD just seemed to think that unless you managed to figure out a system from scratch you suck. I have heard other people complain about this as well. Gentoo fans say they stayed away from BSD apt-get because they found the atmosphere on the forums downright hostile.
Sure we got linux zealots but so far I never met them in real life. I learn from other linux users and nowadays sometimes manage to point a trick or two out to other users. It feels like a far better community to be in.
To be fair I only met about a grand total of 5-6 bsders, so it could have been just them but that doesn't change the fact that 100% of all BSDers I met, all of them needed to develop some people skills. I am sure there must be helpfull or even just friendly BSD users out there. I just never met them.
And this I think answers your question. BSD and in particular its users just never seem capable of appealing to outsiders. And the only way to grow is to get those outsiders. You scare everyone away so you don't grow so noone hears about you so you get all grumpy so even the few that do hear about you get scared away in a vicious circle.
From your tone by the way you seem really pissed off. You say BSD is superior, but fail to give proof. You claim it is more mature but as I said the attitude given off by BSD users seem to suggest they are anything but. This too gets annoying. It is like the eternal debate on wich distro is best. Answer the best is the one you like.
So lighten up. After all apple saw the light didn't they? Try to be a little bit more friendly to newbies who really want to learn but have to ask stupidly annoying questions at first. If you can't or don't want to deal with that then take comfort that you are running a truly secure system, despite that fact you never seem able to prove this, and that all the dweebs morons and losers gravitate to linux like the braindead zombies they are.
In the meantime we enjoy the community of getting things done and helping each other out that for some reason grew up around linux and we welcome with open arms any who escaped from the BSD gulag and nurture them wich friendly users and a cute logo.
The first is a game you can download and train with. It is an okay animated slighly odd to use fight game. The second is lot less clear but the ads for it make it looks a bit like the total war series. Lots of formations of soldiers fighting it out. (nice animation)
But yeah I think that current games make extremly poor TV entertainment. But then again quake? That is like a drunk punchup compared to a thightly regulated boxing match. Just try to make a running commentary on a quake match
Player [34_the()_[t53]] just picked up the gun. oh and got fragged. and he is back and he frags that guy and he gets fragged.
So though luck guys but it looks like you have the following options
So in short I find this article to be in the trend of "Hey we made millions in the dotcom days. But now people seem to expect us to make real products". Yeah cry me a river. Oh well at least they are not aimbot cheaters.
For example I yet have to go into an office where I don't find a winzip way way way past the shareware version expire time. But that don't count according to even very large firms (telecoms) because it is only shareware. (no bsa to fight for them)
Having reread my own post I worded it far to strongly. Sorry.
Very little can de done against it. So the real question is how do other companies like say supermarkets get us to pay for their products. Yesterday on my way to the dentist I walked past the back of a supermarket and totally unprotected where stending several loafs of bread. I could have saved myself A. some money B. the time standing in the que. I did not take the loaf. Why the risk was not worth it for me.
With software however we feel that "stealing" it is not so much a problem when we consider it stealing at all. You think differently? Cute from a guy who calls his image browser software "abc" I am sure acdsee has something to say about this. Software is easily "stolen" and the risks are non-existent.
So the answer? Well look to a different way of doing business. Opera, you got their icon on your page, seems to be surviving despite the fact that it gives its full browser away for free. Oh yeah they got add banners. Even if you are to lazy to find a serial for it you probably filter out the ads at the proxy.
I don't think it is really possible to escape pirates anymore. The cracking has become so fast that games are out cracked before they are in stores. How is a little shop like you possibly going to compete. So go the way of some game companies. Don't bother. Quake without any protection nonetheless was a huge seller. It can be done. But try to stay away from overzealous copyprotection.
Why? Cause the only ones you hurt with all the stuff like serials and calling home functionality are the legitemate users. Not a single company so far has succeeded in keeping popular software out of the warez scene. Not microsoft, not acdsee and neither will you.
Concentrate instead on making the program superior to anyone elses. Then hope that enough people will simply buy it because they find "stealing" wrong to support you. Plenty of free software projects get funding without any obligation to contribute anything.
Remember there is no law wich says you got to be able to make a living. If this doesn't pay your bills then though. Get a J.O.B.
But the real question to you is. Did you pay for opera? Did you make a donation to Apache and all the other OSS software you are using? In short did you fully pay for all software you ever used? No then shut the fuck up. You steal we steal. If you did, then give yourselve a pat on the back, there will no doubt be a place for you in heaven, with just a little bit of hell for infringing on acdsee's trademark. :P
So money is the only thing a dad (I presime you are male) can give to a child? Nice. You don't have to earn as much as possible. Enough will do quit nicely. If you are lucky enough to be able to provide a decent living for your family AND be able to spend time at home with your kid(s) then choose this over earning the maximum salery overtime can bring.
Sure kids love that really expensive toy. But the toy is forgotten in a years time. You missing their team match is never ever forgotten.
Only PHB think when they are about to die that they would have wanted to spend more time in the office.
That is what they want you to think :)
Elections are a waste of time. I am sure that if I got to gether with some smart people I could easily select the perfect leader with the right policies that certianly any rightthinking person would want for this country.
For some reason however dictatorships are not welcomed. Odd really according to this articles reasoning people would enjoy having their choice taken away from them.
Yes there are a shitload of windows/desktop managers for linux. The two major ones Gnome and KDE (in no particular order I prefer enlightenment). It is a little thing called choice. I am sure there are plenty of people who prefer windows who say why are there so many different OSes? Wouldn't it be better if everyone worked on one?
You like KDE you say. Great for you. Now do a little history check. Was KDE the first desktop manager for linux? No? Then you mean that KDE yourselve broke that people should select 1 standard and stick to that. But no KDE came about because some people thought they could do something different and better then what was already out there. This is how things evolve and change. By people trying something different from the already established.
People who complain about Linux not being able to compete with windows because it is not windows enough alike for me are missing the fundamental reason for linux existence. Freedom to thinker. Linux, blessed be his name, did not write linux to overthrow Bill Gates. He wrote it because he thought "what the hey, lets see if I can do this" The orignal post
Linux was a unix for the intel platform. Mmm, kinda like minix then. So should according to your reasoning he simply have put his efforts in this project?
Freedom means allowing people to do things that ain't neccesarly in your own best intrest. Or for that matter their own. Every single invention ever made was made because somebody was not satisfied with the status quo and went outside the accepted solutions to fix it.
For those worrying about Linux not competing with MS, get a life. MS tried and failed with xenix. It then took them a decade to finally get accepted in the office and until a few years ago if you had suggested putting windows in server room people would be telling you that those make it way to easy for burglars to enter.
Is the goal of the free software community to force everyone to use Linux/Gnu/KDE or is it to allow people freedom to work with computers in their own way without being told by somekind of central authority what is best for them?
I now use gentoo, why? Not because it is faster or easier. But because it at least still uses the same boring old text mode bootup that tells me what the fuck MY system is doing. I use enlightenment because it manages my windows without wasting space on taskbars I don't want. My computer, my linux, my freedom. Rememeber in soviet russia/corporate america/gutless europe your desktop is chosen for you :)
Well you know those cute thight young girls that are asking you if there is anyway they could increase their grades? Guess what? They are not asking for study tips.
Women are far less troubled by naked boobies, after all they see them pretty much everyday. They are used to it and unlikely to lose all higher brain functions when things start jiggling. That doesn't stop the fact that the most favored addition to Neverwinter Nights is an erotic adventure created by a female. Women can be just as perverted, in my experience even more so, then men.
So games really don't need to change all that much unless you are a sexist pig who believes that all men want brainless testorone pumpers and all women want fluffy duffy talkie feelie type games.
Men and women can meet each other in the middle and together enjoy games. Women will just shrug off the overlarge boobs in say every RPG ever made with a "boys" and concentrate on enjoying the game. That at least is my experience. I have noted that none of the 2 females I introduced to "The longest journey" commented on april's normal physical build. I noticed it, to them it was just a minor detail, just as they did not get a kick out of seeing her in her undies :P wich means they just enjoyed the game and let the fanservice flow past them.
Still it is amazing to believe one in four gamers is now a woman. Must be going to the wrong lan-parties.
Perhaps I just put to much weight on the word original. But I expect it to mean slightly more then we added a tiny little extra. You have not invented a new food by adding a slice of ehm cucumber to a hamburger.
As it is there are therefore precious few "original" games. The best we can hope for is a well done game. Personally I am still hoping for a game that adds nothing original, only takes the good bits from games that came before and leaves out the bad.
I am tired of playing RPG's in wich I have to pick up every little bit of loot myself, didn't dungeon siege show how it could be done? I am tired of FPS wich always start you off with a pistol against the world and you never get proper armor and weapons while saving the entire world. I am tired of realtime strategy games that always have me just a unit or two behind on the tech ladder compared to the enemy who I have to fight while saving the economy.
So for me the perfect new game doesn't have to come up with anything new. Just fix the damned stuff that is broken. Now that would be original.
And yes I know that this probably won't and can't happen, the storage required to put it all oneline would be gigantic even if you compress it for online use.
Still I prefer to be optimistic. If and when this happens my download connection is going to glow red!
I suppose I should be fair, if I hear some people talk about quake you would think it is the most realistic combat simulator yet build. These are the same assholes who immidialty frag someone standing still while they get the key layout explained and then go "HAHA Noob!". This is the real reason few new people pick it up, because we are unwilling the give newbies a gently introduction. Personally I always restrict myself to the lowest weapon and don't pick up stuff like health until new players have gotten reasonably good at it. So this way I managed to get several avid non-players involved in weekly tournaments.
The hard thing about quake is finding a non-asshole teacher and playing group. Not picking it up.
We need to stop threating computers as somehow magically excempt from normal law. A game is still a product and I should be able to have certain expectation of a game when I buy it. Just like any other product I buy or in the case of an online game rent.
He will probably lose however. Why? Same reason you can't sue for lost mail. The cost of sending a letter is so low that you can't possible expect guaranteed delivery. If you want that pay more for the well guaranteed delivery option. So I think a judge will rule that the price of the game was not so high as to ensure absolute reliability.
mmm, yeah. Sounds like SCO is thinking along the same lines of winning the trial. Now if only we could get say someone from the opposition to also have a change to conduct something like an interview during the trial. Nah, that is will never happen.
If you download an mp3, get it of a cd, you will open it and play it with MS installed apps.
So how exactly would a complete and utter noob get to install kazaa to play an Mp3? I know far more people that are convinved that Windows Media Player is the only way to play their music, and who think that since it has windows in front of it Linux can't play Mp3s.
Oh and yes they are of course right. Kernels are well known for not playing music :)