IMO, Linux needs games in order to "make it" in the mass market... Once you get developers either making games specifically for Linux...
Now, which of those conditions would be "the chicken," and which "the egg?"
I am frankly amazed that any game shy of some "Pong"-like thingie coded by some hobbyist across a long weekend has ever been made for Linux. There is a ridiculously small installed base of Linux desktops relative to even the Mac OS (and we all know how well they're taken care of by the game developing community...).
I switched from Windows to Linux with nary a second thought once OpenOffice and GNUCash got real. It's all about productivity. Now I get my work done, business and personal, without the crashes and the hangs. That's what I need a computer for.
Which is not to say I don't game. Several hours a day, seven days a week, in fact. All on an XBox, which is to say, a gaming console. Radical concept, no? And I never have to worry whether or not the graphics processor in my console will be sufficient for me to get the most out of the game I buy.
I also don't use my propane torch to toast my bread in the morning, nor do I drink my beer from a bowl. I could, of course, 'cept I've got other things in my house already which are much better suited to that function.
"Gaming On Computers" is a remnant of an earlier time. It was a GREAT time, don't get me wrong (I still gaze fondly at my carefully preserved 5.25" floppies of "Gunship" [CGA Version]) but time is marching on. Console hardware sales and console game production is up, the median age of console gamers is wa-a-ay up, and the original trend of games debuting on PC and porting over to the consoles is reversing.
...and the Linux-on-Desktop movement will be better for it. The faster people stop expecting or "needing" there to be Linux games (always poor, paler cousins of their Win counterparts) the faster they will make the transition. With a PS2 version of EQ going online this month (or next?),a number of MMORPGs scheduled to launch on console this year, and the success of the "live" broadband multiplayer initiatives, it is clearly only a matter of time...
....which is good for Linux. I don't know whether or not it's good for the poor ol' sod who wrote "pySOL" or whatever the hell it was, but it's good for Linux.
The majority of gamers are in their mid-teens to 25ish
Actually, that's a popular myth; average gamer age is closer to 28. Full picture from the IDSA press release included below; note that it's a coupla years old, but with last year's launch of the adult-skewing XBox, I'm certain the avg age has not gone down any:
* * *
Washington, D.C.-Sept. 12, 2000 - American adults, whether they be moms and dads or even grandmas and grandpas, are increasingly playing computer and video games, according to data released today by the Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA), the trade group representing U.S. computer and video game publishers.In fact, Baby Boomers are a significant audience for game publishers.
The findings are part of a survey fielded by Peter D. Hart Research Associates earlier this year that showed that 32 percent of Americans who play computer and video games are age 35 or older, with a remarkable 13 percent age 50 or over.
In addition, the study showed that 43 percent of game players are women, and that the average age of these women is 29 years old. Overall, the study showed that 60 percent of all Americans, or about 145 million people, say they play interactive games, exploding the myth that most gamers are teenage boys alone in their rooms.
"The popularity of video games with Baby Boomers reflects the increasing variety and sophistication of titles available and the appeal of entertainment with which users can interact and control," said IDSA President Douglas Lowenstein.
"Whether the title is a fishing game, a quiz or puzzle game, a historically based strategy game, or a complex simulation game, you can bet it is increasingly realistic and immersive and offers what today's technologically savvy adult expects."
IDSA data also shows that these grown-up game players are not simply playing alone -- they're also playing with their children and friends as part of their regular social activities. According to IDSA's fifth annual Consumer Survey, 25 percent of most frequent game players play with their parents, 27 percent play with their spouse, 33 percent play with siblings, and 43 percent play games with other family members.
Types of Games Purchased by Frequent Gamer Players
age 50 and over in the Past Year (source: IDSA Consumer Survey)
Game Genre Percent Age 50+ Who Purchased that Genre
Nothing chaps the ass of a Mac fan more than seeing 2 and 3 year old games fetching $55 a pop once (if) they're finally released. Witness the whole Bungie/Halo debacle, or Neverwinter Nights
I didn't think anybody made games for the Mac anymore. Seriously.
Can't speak for Diablo on Playstation, but having played it through several times on the PC, and having played Baldur's Gate on XBox, I can tell you the experiences were quite similar. Graphics and controls were superb on the XBox, surpassing the PC experience. Not as many characters to choose from, and the booty was all that ridiculous Gygaxian "+5 Sword of Cheesegrating" stuff, but otherwise it was great fun.
You can pretty much buy all three major game consoles for the price of the current best-of-breed computer graphics card, and be reasonably assured of not waiting for any game, if that's your concern.
What's the fun part in running anything on an x-box? Have you forgotten that it's made by microsoft? It's like saying that it's cool to run programs in windows, which it obviously isn't. Stop the madness!
Oh, grow up!
Running Linux on XBox is like playing MP3's on a toaster oven, or using the Internet to see if there is sufficient Mountain Dew in the Soda Machine down the hall. It's what geeks DO, fercrissake!
Your anti-MS kneejerk concerns about "what's cool" make you sound like some high school kid looking to his peer group to decide what music to listen to or what sneakers to wear. MS does make some "cool" things, and not everything Linux is automatically and necessarily "cool."
Please understand that the world is not all Jedi versus Sith.
Aw man. That sucks. I'm not playing Diablo on an Xbox.
Actually, I've already played Diablo on the XBox. It was called "Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance," and it was fabulous. I highly recommend it.
The whole point-[move]-click-point-click-[fight] drill made much more sense, and was even more intuitive (if that's possible) with a controller than ever with a mouse/keyboard.
True, in the united states children are not full blown citizesn with civil rights. But they SHOULD BE...Children are PEOPLE. They do not BELONG to their parents, they aren't posessions like a car or a television...They have every right to buy anything they want...
It's the Dems who want to take your violent games and explicit lyrics away. All part of a general desire to create a government responsibility for raising your children for you.
Why would you ask this question at a Trade Show, to a bunch of Marketing Guys and Booth Babes? To embarrass them?
If you work at IBM, and you have a problem with their polices, be it the OS you use or the lack of sufficient toilet paper in the mens' room, take it up with your supervisors and such. If this means something to you, really means something, show some gumption and initiative and DO something about it.
Don't come on some web-board airing your dirty laundry and encourage total strangers to make fools of your reps at a big trade show. That's the kind of behavior that is liable to put you in a position to realize how well you (formerly) had it at IBM, real quickly.
With this attitude you will never gain any ground in the Desktop world.
I was unaware that IBM, shy of their limited OS/2 initiatives, were looking to enter the "Desktop world." If anything, you should be using OS/2 on your desktop, no? I understand that IBM is all about Linux on the server, but what does that have to do with what word processor the secreteries are using?
...is dear Roger Zelazny twirling about beneath the ground as a result of being separated by a mere comma from Weiss & Hickman.
That being said, allow me to throw my support behind the Tad Williams fantasy and SF, mentioned elsewhere, as well as the standalone books by Guy Gavriel Kay: "Tigana," "A Song for Arbonne," and "The Lions of Al-Rassan." These are all self-contained, yet have the "epic" feel that most authors only achieve in trilogies or better. (If I'm not mistaken, it was Kay that was tapped to finished off some Tolkien fragments prior to their posthumous publication; when you read his stuff, you'll understand how he got that gig.) Kay also wrote something called "The Fionavar Trilogy" which I tried and couldn't get through, but which the reviewers said was a modern re-mixing of Arthuriana, so maybe you read it and are familiar with him...
Even though cyberpunk is so-o-o-o-o 1994, you should probably hit up the Gibson 'Sprawl Trilogy," or at least "Neuromancer."
Baen Books has just released David Weber's newest Honor Harrington book, "War of Honor," and for the price of the hardback you get the print version, and the entire rest of the series that preceded it on CD-ROM, along with artwork and a bunch of maps and stuff. I highly recommend the series, and supporting Baen's brave and innovative efforts in digital distribution.
The Goerge R R Martin trilogy (kings... thrones... swords... sump'n like that) is better than most (I've only read the first one so far).
Look, we could be here for days. "Fantasy and SF" covers a lot of ground. You want to narrow it down to Sword&Sorcery, Cyberpunk, Empowered Lesbian Telepaths, Space Opera, or some other popular sub-niche, we can really get down to brass tacks...
Holy canoleys, you kids take yourselves so seriously!
The copyright holders are playing with you the way you played with their business models. It's hysterically funny.
Do they have a right to? Sure! Of course they do! Obviously.
Do you have a right to rip copies of stuff you bought and play it in your iPOD? Sure you do. Do you have a right To Actively Distribute the copyright holder's stuff worldwide? No, of course not. Is P2P file sharing "active distribution?" Tough to say, opinions vary.
Is the RIAA after Joe Sixpack downloader? Not really (read the interview with Rosen in the current Wired (still only on paper)). They want the big distributors -- if they can only figure out who and *what* those big distributors are.
Have they been greedy in the mark-ups of their CDs? Seems they have been, considering what you get on a similarly shaped object from the MPAA.Couple that with a clear confusion and foot-dragging as regards digital distribution, add a dose of consumer broadband and kids with too much time on their hands, and they have a real crisis. Somehow I think music, civilization, Nine Inch Nails and Britney Spears will survive. It'll all make a fascinating chapter ("The Spoiled Brats vs. The Evil Media Congloms") in a Business 101 textbook 20 years from now.
But "Martyrs for the Cause?" Jeez louise, Bunky, you need to broaden your outlook more. Join the Peace Corps, or the Marines, or volunteer some time with your local nursing home, or nursery. You're liable to end up a very dull adult.
Now, how about this: Why don't we all agree to just pummel snarky wise-assed over-booklearned and under-laid nerds who haven't the social and communication skills God gave to a ferret and might otherwise never learn how to survive in any civilized society not polarized between forces of Absolute Good and Evil where the people didn't runaround with light sabers or rayguns?
Do you like that idea? I like that idea. How 'bout you?
How about any ringtones at all? Seriously, there should just be laws saying that all cellphones can operate in vibrate-mode only if in any public place. But then again, I would rather see litering fines collected against every single smoker that drops a butt on the ground.
Come to New York City, pal. You seem like you're wrapped tight enough that you could probably get a job on Mayor Bloomberg's staff.
Pretty soon there will be no cigarettes to be found anywhere, and so quiet you can hear a pin drop,,,
...because all the people and businesses will have moved away!
Eventually the Internet will become an essential service in any business that's open to the public: malls, airports, schools, bus stops... just like drinking fountains, walkways, and bathrooms.
Dear God, I hope not.
The pathetic freaks I see on my travels who can't wait to blackberry out some drivel or other to some other pathetic freak "back at the office" the moment the flight touches down aren't the power elite cognoscenti, they're ADDICTS. Society needs to view them with the same unflattering glances it usually reserves for the poor slobs "taking a break" sucking down cigrarettes in the pouring rain outside of office buildings.
You wanna really get me going? Let's talk about the dweebs on their cellphones in the friggin' grocery store...
Hey, wireless Internet access, that's great, more power to the carriers, sysAdmins, and Starbucks, God bless! But don't for a heartbeat pretend its "essential," don't equate it with drinking and going to the bathroom. That's just sad, and possibly deranged. What's next? "People have a 'right' to free Internet access?" Please, stop, stop now...
More germane to this specific conversation, airlines should never consider making it "free" (i.e., included in the price of my ticket); it should be sold as an ancillary revenue generator, as are alcoholic beverages.
Well, bad sentence construction usually indicates an American. Apparently, the US public education system is merely designed to instill a yearning for low quality cars, fast food and WWE into it's students - spelling, grammar, mathematics and any kind of art or culture seems to be off the menu
Hm. Interesting.
By the way, where are you from, son? If I was to judge you from your post, as you have seen fit to judge others, I'd say, hmmmmm, let's see... Arrogant... Cowardly... ridiculously placing foot in mouth by mis-using it's while criticizing another nation's school system...
Anime Fan-Fic, eh? Great God in Heaven, where do I begin...? I'd probably have an easier time finding some common ground with a cross-dressing Islamic fundamentalist... OK, try these two concepts:
[1] Imagine that all the manga, from which so much of the anime that floats your boat is based on, were to suddenly be given away for free. I'd say you'd be looking for a new hobby pretty quickly. Might I suggest butterfly-catching?
[2] Or, let's imagine that, instead of spending your time writing derivative work based upon that of another creator, you had enough talent to author an original story (I know it's a stretch, but work with me on this one, 'kay?). Let's even pretend that you had to support your family on the revenue you derived from the distribution of your masterpiece. Dat ol' information don't want to be so free anymore, now, does it, Bunky?
One last suggestion: Print out what you wrote here today, and save it in a cigar box, to be opened 20 years from now. This way, after you have become one of those "old people on the Internet" whom you abhor, and are about to chew some naive punk's head off in whatever constitutes a cyber-community in 2023, you'll show some restraint, being reminded of your own angry and idealistically naive youth.
Or else what? You'll sue? You'll cry? You'll write a letter to the local newspaper?
When did a degree, let alone something like this 18 month "expanded seminar" ever come with a job?
If you're looking for that kind of hand-out, may I suggest that call the phone number that bald dude gives in the late-night ads for the school that trains air conditioning repairmen. I believe he guarantees you can keep the tool belt they give you.
It's the only education of which I am aware that comes with any guarantee, beyond you're getting out of it some measure of what you put in.
maybe they can benefit from the advertisement revenues as well.
Advertisement revenues? On the Internet?
Or... (and this is radical, work with me on this one, 'kay?) you can buy the book! I am almost certain the copyright holders will benefit from people purchasing the book. Whaddya think? Crazy, huh, but it just might work!
Just because a hot book is published and called a "diary," and just because it has become trendy for self-obsessed 20-somethings to put their own diaries on the Internet free-of-charge, doesn't mean that anyone, copyright holder or distributor, "should" take that same hot property and turn it into a free weblog.
Except that it wasn't "their own works." This is just the stage crew pantomiming the cast. I would have been a lot more impressed had these guys taken a property of their own, rather than one already done to death by both its owners as well as the silly "Fan-Fic" people, and created something worth slashdotting.
Technology is easy (and getting easier and less expensive daily).
Creativity is hard.
On a positive note, the success and quality of work of independent film makers is making incredible leaps and bounds. The "latest digital technologies" are a part of that success, but focusing on that is like focusing on what word processor an author uses. oh, wait...
I see this horrible grasp of subject-verb agreement *constantly* on Slashdot and it's driving me batty !
My guess is that, in your case, it's not much of a drive. More like a short putt on a very level green.
For me, the most irritating maggots here are the guys who set words apart in sentences through the use of asterisks. I mean, it's a website, why aren't they using the tags for BOLD and ITALICS?
That would be the proper thing to do, wouldn't you agree?
I was sort of dismayed to see how he seemed to stick with proprietary technologies like Windows and Director.
My guess is he was familiar with these "dreaded" proprietary technologies and wanted to finish the project sometime before he graduated.
Often, the best tool for a job is the one you already have handy and know how to use. It was a foosball hack, afterall, and not a governmental census database for an emerging country, right?
Now Sony is protecting us from those evil American Empires Motorola and Scientific/Atlanta, as well as that nasty Canadian robber baron Videotron, as well as all those evil Korean STB monopolies? Um, Ok, great. Thanks.
Next time, will somebody please circulate a memo reminding us from whom we need saving? I'm losing track.
Also, this is not a consumer product. The Western Show where Sony made it's announcement is a Cable Operators Trade Show, a Comdex for the head-end and pole-climbing set. You can't walk into your local Radio Shack or Circuit Shack, buy a spiffy Sony Passage sitting up there on a shelf next to their Vaio's and PS2's, take it home, and give your Motorola box back to Comcast.
The key to understanding the role of the Passage, as I take it from following the links provided, is that the technology enables cable operators to purchase and deploy the 3 NEW SONY STB's ALSO BEING ANNOUNCED at the show. It would seem to allow a plant with existing S/A or Motorola infrastructure to hopskotch around their implied commitment to deploy S/A or Motorola boxes in the home, and use the new Sony STBs instead. The roll-out is presumed rather painless as well, as the Passage seems to allow old school and new Sony boxes to co-exist for an infinite time.
Of course, the technology economics of cable head ends are all balanced among the one-time-only cost of the legacy headend gear, and the presumed-to-be-ever-growing costs of the franchise build-out and additional STBs. For this reason, companies such as Motorola and S/A are typically inclined to provide sweet deals on the former encoder "razors," cuz they know the real money is to be made on the latter STB "blades." Sony wet-blankets those economics now. I'm sure the immediate fall-out of Passage will be a re-wording of a lot of their rivals' sales agreements locking low costs for the head-end gear into commitments for minimum STB purchases.
More business for the lawyers. More meetings for the salesguys. But none of this effects a consumer's "choice." You'll take whatever your cable company puts on top of your TV, end of story.
No, not at all. The solution is found in a counter-intuitive place, however: console games.
I was a big PC gamer in the nineties, tweaking and upgrading and tinkering with drivers, DOS boot-discs etc etc. During that time, the requirements of the "real-world" apps I was running on my PCs were keeping pace with the expanding game requirements. Sure, I might be upgrading six months earlier because of Quake, but I knew that the performance for the next release of Lotus 123 would appreciate it as well. Meanwhile, I read about all the consoles, saw the "super mario" and other four-color franchises grow, and figured these were toys for the high school kids.
Me, I was an adult, and I had an Adult Game Machine -- a PC! (*ahem*)
Then one day around the release of the G4 card (at circa $500) I realized that, unless I switched careers over to astronomy, there was never any reason I could justify that my business apps would ever benefit from all that graphical goodness. Since my time spent gaming with anything more sophisticated than blocks was becoming less and less (twin toddlers), I figured my gaming days had reached their natural, evolutionary end.
Okay, okay, I actually ended up buying two G4 cards, but that's not my point, hear me out...
I bought a console. X-Box, specifically, but the brand does not matter for purposes of this discussion. And it's great! The games look great, it sits in my LIVING ROOM, plugs into the home theatre 5.1, and there are titles available that appeal to just about every member of the family. Most have multi-player mode which allow for spouse co-op or dad v. kid(s) play.
I now play games as much as I did five years ago, but see my wife and kids more while doing it. There are, of course, some games that suffer from "dumbing down" due to the absence of a keyboard, but just as many or more which benefit greatly from being controller-specific (esp the Diablo-esque "Baldur's Gate" and its ilk). Best of all, I'm done: No monitor upgrades, no new cards, no registries to comb over, no OS's to flush every five months, it's all brilliant. You take a game out of the box, pop it into the console, and you're playing immediately.
And someday, when XBox 2 comes out, and I've played all the XBox 1 games worth playing, what's it going to cost me to "upgrade" to a new console.... $200? $300? Seems like that might be livable...
Yeah, I know, for those of you who have been playing on consoles for 20 years, this is old hat. But to a PC-diehard like me who has only recently stepped into the light, these are womderful times.
...the TV show you intend to watch is there. It may begin a few seconds late, on purpose or as a result of some discrepancy, but the TV show you want to watch is there.
For the past few years, networks on the national and local levels have all been switching over to server-based content play-out. TV from Computers! How Exciting! How Wonderful! How... frickin' scary, for those whose jobs it has been to ensure that Buffy plays down at 8, and not 8:02, or 8:15, or - Powers-That-Be Forbid! - Wednesday morning.
Professional TV Master Control operations traditionally operate (often contractually) to "five 9's" of reliability, 24x7, assessed monthly. Full Stop, Period, End-of-Story. TV Master Control geeks, their supervisors, and the maintenance engineers who support them have ever been a priesthood apart when it comes to worship at the Uptime Altar.
So what has their industry done, to ensure that all this "new wave" server and automation technology provides them with the same reliability as manual control and tape-based playback? Why, buy two of everything, of course! EV-ER-Y THING!
The server industry is only getting around to understanding that now, and is beginning to price their wares accordingly. I've attended dozens of vendor meetings over the past ten years where the salesguys, who six months earlier were selling mailservers to sysAdmins, are now selling their new video servers to Master Control guys. (Chum dished into a shark tank is the only comparable visual I can come up with.) What makes the sale is never the reliability of server over tape or (especially) the quality of server over tape, but desire of management to run more channels with fewer bodies. In the past this has led to management re-assessment of just how "inexpensive" server-based playout technology was and, in many cases I have seen, an increase in the number of channels created or planned as a means to justify the hardware costs.
The only debate point in most TV Master Controls comes down to what components are in-chassis redundant, which are external-chassis "hot" spares, and which are shelf spares.
My point (and I do have one...) is how it is unconscionable that a hospital where lives are at stake, lacks the war-room mentality that an entertainment operation has. It's real simple at the end of the day to assess which components in a network --info or video or both - chain are critical, and buy two of them and keep it all lit and tested. Lives are at stake, and your signature is on the shift report? You rent a tertiary back-up system to bring online while you do your regular and frequent preventive maintenance on your primary and secondary.
The guys who take care of Buffy do it. I would have thought that the guys who take care of sick babies and grandmothers would be playing in the same league.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, which of those conditions would be "the chicken," and which "the egg?"
I am frankly amazed that any game shy of some "Pong"-like thingie coded by some hobbyist across a long weekend has ever been made for Linux. There is a ridiculously small installed base of Linux desktops relative to even the Mac OS (and we all know how well they're taken care of by the game developing community...).
I switched from Windows to Linux with nary a second thought once OpenOffice and GNUCash got real. It's all about productivity. Now I get my work done, business and personal, without the crashes and the hangs. That's what I need a computer for.
Which is not to say I don't game. Several hours a day, seven days a week, in fact. All on an XBox, which is to say, a gaming console. Radical concept, no? And I never have to worry whether or not the graphics processor in my console will be sufficient for me to get the most out of the game I buy.
I also don't use my propane torch to toast my bread in the morning, nor do I drink my beer from a bowl. I could, of course, 'cept I've got other things in my house already which are much better suited to that function.
"Gaming On Computers" is a remnant of an earlier time. It was a GREAT time, don't get me wrong (I still gaze fondly at my carefully preserved 5.25" floppies of "Gunship" [CGA Version]) but time is marching on. Console hardware sales and console game production is up, the median age of console gamers is wa-a-ay up, and the original trend of games debuting on PC and porting over to the consoles is reversing.
. ...which is good for Linux. I don't know whether or not it's good for the poor ol' sod who wrote "pySOL" or whatever the hell it was, but it's good for Linux.
The majority of gamers are in their mid-teens to 25ish
Actually, that's a popular myth; average gamer age is closer to 28. Full picture from the IDSA press release included below; note that it's a coupla years old, but with last year's launch of the adult-skewing XBox, I'm certain the avg age has not gone down any:
* * *
Washington, D.C.-Sept. 12, 2000 - American adults, whether they be moms and dads or even grandmas and grandpas, are increasingly playing computer and video games, according to data released today by the Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA), the trade group representing U.S. computer and video game publishers.In fact, Baby Boomers are a significant audience for game publishers.
The findings are part of a survey fielded by Peter D. Hart Research Associates earlier this year that showed that 32 percent of Americans who play computer and video games are age 35 or older, with a remarkable 13 percent age 50 or over.
In addition, the study showed that 43 percent of game players are women, and that the average age of these women is 29 years old. Overall, the study showed that 60 percent of all Americans, or about 145 million people, say they play interactive games, exploding the myth that most gamers are teenage boys alone in their rooms.
"The popularity of video games with Baby Boomers reflects the increasing variety and sophistication of titles available and the appeal of entertainment with which users can interact and control," said IDSA President Douglas Lowenstein.
"Whether the title is a fishing game, a quiz or puzzle game, a historically based strategy game, or a complex simulation game, you can bet it is increasingly realistic and immersive and offers what today's technologically savvy adult expects."
IDSA data also shows that these grown-up game players are not simply playing alone -- they're also playing with their children and friends as part of their regular social activities. According to IDSA's fifth annual Consumer Survey, 25 percent of most frequent game players play with their parents, 27 percent play with their spouse, 33 percent play with siblings, and 43 percent play games with other family members.
Types of Games Purchased by Frequent Gamer Players
age 50 and over in the Past Year (source: IDSA Consumer Survey)
Game Genre Percent Age 50+ Who Purchased that Genre
Puzzle/Board Game/Card 25.5 percent
Action 12.7 percent
Learning 10.4 percent
Role Playing/Adventure 10.0 percent
Driving/Racing 10.0 percent
Nothing chaps the ass of a Mac fan more than seeing 2 and 3 year old games fetching $55 a pop once (if) they're finally released. Witness the whole Bungie/Halo debacle, or Neverwinter Nights
I didn't think anybody made games for the Mac anymore. Seriously.
Can't speak for Diablo on Playstation, but having played it through several times on the PC, and having played Baldur's Gate on XBox, I can tell you the experiences were quite similar. Graphics and controls were superb on the XBox, surpassing the PC experience. Not as many characters to choose from, and the booty was all that ridiculous Gygaxian "+5 Sword of Cheesegrating" stuff, but otherwise it was great fun.
You can pretty much buy all three major game consoles for the price of the current best-of-breed computer graphics card, and be reasonably assured of not waiting for any game, if that's your concern.
What's the fun part in running anything on an x-box? Have you forgotten that it's made by microsoft? It's like saying that it's cool to run programs in windows, which it obviously isn't. Stop the madness!
Oh, grow up!
Running Linux on XBox is like playing MP3's on a toaster oven, or using the Internet to see if there is sufficient Mountain Dew in the Soda Machine down the hall. It's what geeks DO, fercrissake!
Your anti-MS kneejerk concerns about "what's cool" make you sound like some high school kid looking to his peer group to decide what music to listen to or what sneakers to wear. MS does make some "cool" things, and not everything Linux is automatically and necessarily "cool."
Please understand that the world is not all Jedi versus Sith.
Aw man. That sucks. I'm not playing Diablo on an Xbox.
Actually, I've already played Diablo on the XBox. It was called "Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance," and it was fabulous. I highly recommend it.
The whole point-[move]-click-point-click-[fight] drill made much more sense, and was even more intuitive (if that's possible) with a controller than ever with a mouse/keyboard.
errr, I just checked out your website.
Not only shouldn't you be allowed to vote, you should be deported!
Now, you get to bed, mister! This Instant!!
True, in the united states children are not full blown citizesn with civil rights. But they SHOULD BE...Children are PEOPLE. They do not BELONG to their parents, they aren't posessions like a car or a television...They have every right to buy anything they want...
GO TO BED! RIGHT NOW!!!
um, d00d...
You're, like, so-o-o-o-o 1993.
It's the Dems who want to take your violent games and explicit lyrics away. All part of a general desire to create a government responsibility for raising your children for you.
The "Bible Thumpers" have been laying low...
It's your country; Do try to keep up, won't you?
If you work at IBM, and you have a problem with their polices, be it the OS you use or the lack of sufficient toilet paper in the mens' room, take it up with your supervisors and such. If this means something to you, really means something, show some gumption and initiative and DO something about it.
Don't come on some web-board airing your dirty laundry and encourage total strangers to make fools of your reps at a big trade show. That's the kind of behavior that is liable to put you in a position to realize how well you (formerly) had it at IBM, real quickly.
With this attitude you will never gain any ground in the Desktop world.
I was unaware that IBM, shy of their limited OS/2 initiatives, were looking to enter the "Desktop world." If anything, you should be using OS/2 on your desktop, no? I understand that IBM is all about Linux on the server, but what does that have to do with what word processor the secreteries are using?
What is your response to the vulterant claims that your Gnome/KDE setup is breaking QT apps and causing havoc for developers who make use of QT?
And, if you have time, a Follow Up Question, please:
What does "vulterant" mean?
...is dear Roger Zelazny twirling about beneath the ground as a result of being separated by a mere comma from Weiss & Hickman.
That being said, allow me to throw my support behind the Tad Williams fantasy and SF, mentioned elsewhere, as well as the standalone books by Guy Gavriel Kay: "Tigana," "A Song for Arbonne," and "The Lions of Al-Rassan." These are all self-contained, yet have the "epic" feel that most authors only achieve in trilogies or better. (If I'm not mistaken, it was Kay that was tapped to finished off some Tolkien fragments prior to their posthumous publication; when you read his stuff, you'll understand how he got that gig.) Kay also wrote something called "The Fionavar Trilogy" which I tried and couldn't get through, but which the reviewers said was a modern re-mixing of Arthuriana, so maybe you read it and are familiar with him...
Even though cyberpunk is so-o-o-o-o 1994, you should probably hit up the Gibson 'Sprawl Trilogy," or at least "Neuromancer."
Baen Books has just released David Weber's newest Honor Harrington book, "War of Honor," and for the price of the hardback you get the print version, and the entire rest of the series that preceded it on CD-ROM, along with artwork and a bunch of maps and stuff. I highly recommend the series, and supporting Baen's brave and innovative efforts in digital distribution.
The Goerge R R Martin trilogy (kings... thrones... swords... sump'n like that) is better than most (I've only read the first one so far).
Look, we could be here for days. "Fantasy and SF" covers a lot of ground. You want to narrow it down to Sword&Sorcery, Cyberpunk, Empowered Lesbian Telepaths, Space Opera, or some other popular sub-niche, we can really get down to brass tacks...
"Civil Disobedience?"
"Time and Determination?"
"MARTYR FOR THE CAUSE?!?"
Holy canoleys, you kids take yourselves so seriously!
The copyright holders are playing with you the way you played with their business models. It's hysterically funny.
Do they have a right to? Sure! Of course they do! Obviously.
Do you have a right to rip copies of stuff you bought and play it in your iPOD? Sure you do. Do you have a right To Actively Distribute the copyright holder's stuff worldwide? No, of course not. Is P2P file sharing "active distribution?" Tough to say, opinions vary.
Is the RIAA after Joe Sixpack downloader? Not really (read the interview with Rosen in the current Wired (still only on paper)). They want the big distributors -- if they can only figure out who and *what* those big distributors are.
Have they been greedy in the mark-ups of their CDs? Seems they have been, considering what you get on a similarly shaped object from the MPAA.Couple that with a clear confusion and foot-dragging as regards digital distribution, add a dose of consumer broadband and kids with too much time on their hands, and they have a real crisis. Somehow I think music, civilization, Nine Inch Nails and Britney Spears will survive. It'll all make a fascinating chapter ("The Spoiled Brats vs. The Evil Media Congloms") in a Business 101 textbook 20 years from now.
But "Martyrs for the Cause?" Jeez louise, Bunky, you need to broaden your outlook more. Join the Peace Corps, or the Marines, or volunteer some time with your local nursing home, or nursery. You're liable to end up a very dull adult.
Hey, that' great!
Now, how about this: Why don't we all agree to just pummel snarky wise-assed over-booklearned and under-laid nerds who haven't the social and communication skills God gave to a ferret and might otherwise never learn how to survive in any civilized society not polarized between forces of Absolute Good and Evil where the people didn't runaround with light sabers or rayguns?
Do you like that idea? I like that idea. How 'bout you?
But then again, I would rather see litering fines collected against every single smoker that drops a butt on the ground.
Come to New York City, pal. You seem like you're wrapped tight enough that you could probably get a job on Mayor Bloomberg's staff.
Pretty soon there will be no cigarettes to be found anywhere, and so quiet you can hear a pin drop,,,
Eventually the Internet will become an essential service in any business that's open to the public: malls, airports, schools, bus stops... just like drinking fountains, walkways, and bathrooms.
Dear God, I hope not.
The pathetic freaks I see on my travels who can't wait to blackberry out some drivel or other to some other pathetic freak "back at the office" the moment the flight touches down aren't the power elite cognoscenti, they're ADDICTS. Society needs to view them with the same unflattering glances it usually reserves for the poor slobs "taking a break" sucking down cigrarettes in the pouring rain outside of office buildings.
You wanna really get me going? Let's talk about the dweebs on their cellphones in the friggin' grocery store...
Hey, wireless Internet access, that's great, more power to the carriers, sysAdmins, and Starbucks, God bless! But don't for a heartbeat pretend its "essential," don't equate it with drinking and going to the bathroom. That's just sad, and possibly deranged. What's next? "People have a 'right' to free Internet access?" Please, stop, stop now...
More germane to this specific conversation, airlines should never consider making it "free" (i.e., included in the price of my ticket); it should be sold as an ancillary revenue generator, as are alcoholic beverages.
Well, bad sentence construction usually indicates an American. Apparently, the US public education system is merely designed to instill a yearning for low quality cars, fast food and WWE into it's students - spelling, grammar, mathematics and any kind of art or culture seems to be off the menu
Hm. Interesting.
By the way, where are you from, son? If I was to judge you from your post, as you have seen fit to judge others, I'd say, hmmmmm, let's see... Arrogant... Cowardly... ridiculously placing foot in mouth by mis-using it's while criticizing another nation's school system...
France?
Mohandas Karamachand Gandhi
[does spit-take with coffee into monitor; writes this one-handed while wiping the screen]
So now the pirates are wrapping themselves in the sari of Ahimsa?! Glad I read it here; If someone had told me this, I would not have believed it.
Thanks, son, for my laugh of the day.
Oh, wait, I just visited your homepage.
Anime Fan-Fic, eh? Great God in Heaven, where do I begin...? I'd probably have an easier time finding some common ground with a cross-dressing Islamic fundamentalist... OK, try these two concepts:
[1] Imagine that all the manga, from which so much of the anime that floats your boat is based on, were to suddenly be given away for free. I'd say you'd be looking for a new hobby pretty quickly. Might I suggest butterfly-catching?
[2] Or, let's imagine that, instead of spending your time writing derivative work based upon that of another creator, you had enough talent to author an original story (I know it's a stretch, but work with me on this one, 'kay?). Let's even pretend that you had to support your family on the revenue you derived from the distribution of your masterpiece. Dat ol' information don't want to be so free anymore, now, does it, Bunky?
One last suggestion: Print out what you wrote here today, and save it in a cigar box, to be opened 20 years from now. This way, after you have become one of those "old people on the Internet" whom you abhor, and are about to chew some naive punk's head off in whatever constitutes a cyber-community in 2023, you'll show some restraint, being reminded of your own angry and idealistically naive youth.
It (usually) works for me.
Or else what? You'll sue? You'll cry? You'll write a letter to the local newspaper?
When did a degree, let alone something like this 18 month "expanded seminar" ever come with a job?
If you're looking for that kind of hand-out, may I suggest that call the phone number that bald dude gives in the late-night ads for the school that trains air conditioning repairmen. I believe he guarantees you can keep the tool belt they give you.
It's the only education of which I am aware that comes with any guarantee, beyond you're getting out of it some measure of what you put in.
geez... kids today...
maybe they can benefit from the advertisement revenues as well.
Advertisement revenues? On the Internet?
Or... (and this is radical, work with me on this one, 'kay?) you can buy the book! I am almost certain the copyright holders will benefit from people purchasing the book. Whaddya think? Crazy, huh, but it just might work!
Just because a hot book is published and called a "diary," and just because it has become trendy for self-obsessed 20-somethings to put their own diaries on the Internet free-of-charge, doesn't mean that anyone, copyright holder or distributor, "should" take that same hot property and turn it into a free weblog.
Not if they have any sense, leastaways...
Except that it wasn't "their own works." This is just the stage crew pantomiming the cast. I would have been a lot more impressed had these guys taken a property of their own, rather than one already done to death by both its owners as well as the silly "Fan-Fic" people, and created something worth slashdotting.
Technology is easy (and getting easier and less expensive daily).
Creativity is hard.
On a positive note, the success and quality of work of independent film makers is making incredible leaps and bounds. The "latest digital technologies" are a part of that success, but focusing on that is like focusing on
what word processor an author uses. oh, wait...
I see this horrible grasp of subject-verb agreement *constantly* on Slashdot and it's driving me batty !
My guess is that, in your case, it's not much of a drive. More like a short putt on a very level green.
For me, the most irritating maggots here are the guys who set words apart in sentences through the use of asterisks. I mean, it's a website, why aren't they using the tags for BOLD and ITALICS?
That would be the proper thing to do, wouldn't you agree?
I was sort of dismayed to see how he seemed to stick with proprietary technologies like Windows and Director.
My guess is he was familiar with these "dreaded" proprietary technologies and wanted to finish the project sometime before he graduated.
Often, the best tool for a job is the one you already have handy and know how to use. It was a foosball hack, afterall, and not a governmental census database for an emerging country, right?
Now Sony is protecting us from those evil American Empires Motorola and Scientific/Atlanta, as well as that nasty Canadian robber baron Videotron, as well as all those evil Korean STB monopolies? Um, Ok, great. Thanks.
Next time, will somebody please circulate a memo reminding us from whom we need saving? I'm losing track.
Also, this is not a consumer product. The Western Show where Sony made it's announcement is a Cable Operators Trade Show, a Comdex for the head-end and pole-climbing set. You can't walk into your local Radio Shack or Circuit Shack, buy a spiffy Sony Passage sitting up there on a shelf next to their Vaio's and PS2's, take it home, and give your Motorola box back to Comcast.
The key to understanding the role of the Passage, as I take it from following the links provided, is that the technology enables cable operators to purchase and deploy the 3 NEW SONY STB's ALSO BEING ANNOUNCED at the show. It would seem to allow a plant with existing S/A or Motorola infrastructure to hopskotch around their implied commitment to deploy S/A or Motorola boxes in the home, and use the new Sony STBs instead. The roll-out is presumed rather painless as well, as the Passage seems to allow old school and new Sony boxes to co-exist for an infinite time.
Of course, the technology economics of cable head ends are all balanced among the one-time-only cost of the legacy headend gear, and the presumed-to-be-ever-growing costs of the franchise build-out and additional STBs. For this reason, companies such as Motorola and S/A are typically inclined to provide sweet deals on the former encoder "razors," cuz they know the real money is to be made on the latter STB "blades." Sony wet-blankets those economics now. I'm sure the immediate fall-out of Passage will be a re-wording of a lot of their rivals' sales agreements locking low costs for the head-end gear into commitments for minimum STB purchases.
More business for the lawyers. More meetings for the salesguys. But none of this effects a consumer's "choice." You'll take whatever your cable company puts on top of your TV, end of story.
Is there something wrong with me?...
No, not at all. The solution is found in a counter-intuitive place, however: console games.
I was a big PC gamer in the nineties, tweaking and upgrading and tinkering with drivers, DOS boot-discs etc etc. During that time, the requirements of the "real-world" apps I was running on my PCs were keeping pace with the expanding game requirements. Sure, I might be upgrading six months earlier because of Quake, but I knew that the performance for the next release of Lotus 123 would appreciate it as well. Meanwhile, I read about all the consoles, saw the "super mario" and other four-color franchises grow, and figured these were toys for the high school kids.
Me, I was an adult, and I had an Adult Game Machine -- a PC! (*ahem*)
Then one day around the release of the G4 card (at circa $500) I realized that, unless I switched careers over to astronomy, there was never any reason I could justify that my business apps would ever benefit from all that graphical goodness. Since my time spent gaming with anything more sophisticated than blocks was becoming less and less (twin toddlers), I figured my gaming days had reached their natural, evolutionary end.
Okay, okay, I actually ended up buying two G4 cards, but that's not my point, hear me out...
I bought a console. X-Box, specifically, but the brand does not matter for purposes of this discussion. And it's great! The games look great, it sits in my LIVING ROOM, plugs into the home theatre 5.1, and there are titles available that appeal to just about every member of the family. Most have multi-player mode which allow for spouse co-op or dad v. kid(s) play.
I now play games as much as I did five years ago, but see my wife and kids more while doing it. There are, of course, some games that suffer from "dumbing down" due to the absence of a keyboard, but just as many or more which benefit greatly from being controller-specific (esp the Diablo-esque "Baldur's Gate" and its ilk). Best of all, I'm done: No monitor upgrades, no new cards, no registries to comb over, no OS's to flush every five months, it's all brilliant. You take a game out of the box, pop it into the console, and you're playing immediately.
And someday, when XBox 2 comes out, and I've played all the XBox 1 games worth playing, what's it going to cost me to "upgrade" to a new console.... $200? $300? Seems like that might be livable...
Yeah, I know, for those of you who have been playing on consoles for 20 years, this is old hat. But to a PC-diehard like me who has only recently stepped into the light, these are womderful times.
...the TV show you intend to watch is there. It may begin a few seconds late, on purpose or as a result of some discrepancy, but the TV show you want to watch is there.
For the past few years, networks on the national and local levels have all been switching over to server-based content play-out. TV from Computers! How Exciting! How Wonderful! How... frickin' scary, for those whose jobs it has been to ensure that Buffy plays down at 8, and not 8:02, or 8:15, or - Powers-That-Be Forbid! - Wednesday morning.
Professional TV Master Control operations traditionally operate (often contractually) to "five 9's" of reliability, 24x7, assessed monthly. Full Stop, Period, End-of-Story. TV Master Control geeks, their supervisors, and the maintenance engineers who support them have ever been a priesthood apart when it comes to worship at the Uptime Altar.
So what has their industry done, to ensure that all this "new wave" server and automation technology provides them with the same reliability as manual control and tape-based playback? Why, buy two of everything, of course! EV-ER-Y THING!
The server industry is only getting around to understanding that now, and is beginning to price their wares accordingly. I've attended dozens of vendor meetings over the past ten years where the salesguys, who six months earlier were selling mailservers to sysAdmins, are now selling their new video servers to Master Control guys. (Chum dished into a shark tank is the only comparable visual I can come up with.) What makes the sale is never the reliability of server over tape or (especially) the quality of server over tape, but desire of management to run more channels with fewer bodies. In the past this has led to management re-assessment of just how "inexpensive" server-based playout technology was and, in many cases I have seen, an increase in the number of channels created or planned as a means to justify the hardware costs.
The only debate point in most TV Master Controls comes down to what components are in-chassis redundant, which are external-chassis "hot" spares, and which are shelf spares.
My point (and I do have one...) is how it is unconscionable that a hospital where lives are at stake, lacks the war-room mentality that an entertainment operation has. It's real simple at the end of the day to assess which components in a network --info or video or both - chain are critical, and buy two of them and keep it all lit and tested. Lives are at stake, and your signature is on the shift report? You rent a tertiary back-up system to bring online while you do your regular and frequent preventive maintenance on your primary and secondary.
The guys who take care of Buffy do it. I would have thought that the guys who take care of sick babies and grandmothers would be playing in the same league.