I don't know how viable of a business strategy this is, but even if they were to successfully sue every linux company into bankruptcy (hypothetically) they would eventually run out of people to sue and go bankrupt themselves. It's like a virus that feeds on other living cells until it has no more hosts. Once it runs out of hosts, it must itself die.
Oh lordy. If suing Linux vendors is their new business plan... okay. Makes sense. Because, as we know, packaging and selling Linux distributions is such a profitable business that SCO is bound to cash in big time with this strategy.
OK, but I would bet you top dollar that over 90% of sales were "AFTER the initial 5 months".
Okay, I'll take that bet. When Half-Life came out, multiplayer was viewed as something of a pleasant curiosity. All of those "game of the year" awards weren't for multiplayer, they were (rightfully so) for the well-constructed single-player game.
I know *Valve* knows this, just as they know that multiplayer and mod-ablilty give your game an extended life; as such, I'm not worried. I'm sure that HL2's single-player game will live up to the standard set by its predecessor.
I use Maya on a Win2k box at work, and I found it unreasonably difficult to use with a regular wheel mouse. I ended up getting an old-school Logitech 3-button ball mouse. The problem is that in Maya, you're constantly holding down various combinations of the 3 mouse buttons to zoom, pan, and rotate the 3d views. (This interaction scheme was developed on the SGI, which presumed a traditional 3-button mouse.)
While the wheel is a great feature, it isn't suitable for applications which require the third button to be held down for extended periods (rather than just *clicked*.)
[shameless plug]
Tim Schafer, the man behind Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, and co-man behind Day of the Tentacle, has formed his own company: Double Fine. We're working on a 3d adventure/platformer called Psychonauts for the Xbox, which is about running through other peoples' minds. Good stuff.
Measurements show that 12% of the mass is single socks. Scientists are still trying to identify the other 88% of mass.
Scientists have informally labeled the remaining 88% dark socks.;)
Moderators: Please show restraint with mods here
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Please, in this thread more than ever, concentrate on moderating up rather than down. This issue is bound to foster a great deal of passionate discussion on all sides. If you disagree with a post in this thread, post a reply or mod up a reply that represents your point of view. This is not the time to suppress opinions we disagree with.
Re:The only thing war has ever done is...
on
Strike on Iraq
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· Score: 2, Informative
The only thing war has ever done is... defeat Nazism, Communism, and [hopefully] Terrorism.
One of these things is not like the other. Nazism and Communism are, respectively, political and economic ideologies. We didn't defeat these ideologies; we defeated countries that were governed by regimes who practiced these ideologies.
Terrorism is a methodology. You most certainly don't "defeat" a methodology. It's an abstraction.
Now... the West may... may be able to defeat specific militant Islamic groups. I hope so. However, please don't get wrapped up in this administration's linguistic antics.
I might argue here that Iraq doesn't fall into the category of "militant Islamic group", but I have a feeling I'll be spending a lot of time in this thread tonight, and want to survey the landscape of posts before proceeding.
... if I had the financial backing, I'd go for the Havok engine.
Unless something's changed recently, the Havok engine is solely for physics. (Not that this fact would preclude you from using it if you had financial backing;)
It was also pretty linear and didn't take advantage of collaborative gaming. Maybe these new games can improve on that.
I have high hopes for these community-based projects -- Majestic had a really particular set of problems as a subscription-based service. This won't be an issue with these new games ("experiences"?) As long as the love is there (and it usually is with such grassroots/community-based endeavors) they're set.
How come the NYT gets an obligatory 'free registration required' warning while Salon doesn't merit an 'expensive and probably futile registration required' fatal error?
Huh... I never thought about it, but I've been a Salon (paid) subscriber for a long time, yet I still haven't gotten a free NYT account. For whatever reason, I remain resentful that the Times wants all this info. Strange.
In windows, I double-click setup.exe, a GUI pops up, I pick the destination and off it goes. Why can't someone make something like this for Linux?
I know this isn't really the same, but as a relatively new Linux user, I've been surprised at the simplicity and effectiveness of...
./configure
./make ./make install
If the dependencies are present, it really "just works". If there are unmet dependencies, the configure script tells you what's missing. Yes, it could be better... it could tell you exactly what rpm will contain the lib you need; it could auto-launch your web browser with a search on rpmfind... but it's not nearly as bad as it was, say, two years ago.
Why does a game have to go to "Major Publication" to be a success?
It's because of the way game development works -- when you get a contract with a publisher, you're basically guaranteeing that you'll have funding for the duration of your project. The publisher generally takes a significant risk when signing such contracts, because the vast majority of games never even sell enough copies to cover their cost of development.
So if you don't have that contract, you presumably have to be getting funding from elsewhere. If you're planning on trying to run a business off of game royalties, you've got a death wish.
What's the solution? I think it's something we haven't seen yet. I'd love someone to start an organization that's like NPR/PBS, where a central group accepts public donations/membership and then distributes that money to select developers. These developers then have a responsibility to make games that are, above all, good, rather than games that sell. What's the difference? The amount of risk a developer takes. If you're not constantly worried about the pressures of the marketplace, about competing with this or that game that just came out, you're free to take more risks and... dare I say... innovate?
"These congressmen must be held accountable," said Ronald Drake, a Lincoln, NE, hardware-store owner. "My hard-earned tax dollars will be supporting repertory theaters and art galleries--places no decent, hard-working American would ever set foot in. And then there's the museums I always hear about on the news, with the dirty photos and whatnot."
If the medium is going to grow into any kind of maturity, and break out of the grip of the genres is it mostly in now (exceptions: Black & White, The Sims, Ico, Mister Mosquito, Rez) then I suspect an "art genre" will develop. And it may develop with some public help. If not in the US (which seems to have an allergy to publicly supported art), then maybe in Europe or Asia.
And excellent set of points. The more innovation succeeds in the marketplace, the more you'll see publishers willing to take risks. As for the U.S. allergy to publically-funded art... it's so true. Invariably, the first reaction to a new piece of public art is, "What the hell is that? Who ordered that? You mean my money was used to pay for that?!?"
The free market ideology has deep roots in our fundamental national consciousness.
Sure: the Konqueror window I'm looking at has about 50 distinct widgets and manipulable elements in it (buttons, menu entries, labels, scroll bars, icons, etc.), yet it only uses 7 distinct X11 subwindows. The intent of X11 was to use subwindows as a kind of structured graphics for building toolkits, but Qt and Gtk+ just do a whole lot of drawing inside big windows, and they have a whole lot of their own event processing logic. As an analogy, you can create graphics in PostScript by using its drawing commands, or you can create it by embedding a big bitmap. KDE/Qt and Gnome/Gtk+ are effectively doing the latter in a lot of cases.
Interesting. Are there any environments in development that utilize X11 in the way you think it should be done?
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I don't know how viable of a business strategy this is, but even if they were to successfully sue every linux company into bankruptcy (hypothetically) they would eventually run out of people to sue and go bankrupt themselves. It's like a virus that feeds on other living cells until it has no more hosts. Once it runs out of hosts, it must itself die.
:)
Oh lordy. If suing Linux vendors is their new business plan... okay. Makes sense. Because, as we know, packaging and selling Linux distributions is such a profitable business that SCO is bound to cash in big time with this strategy.
*snicker*
Manhole covers are round because manholes are round.
:)
Somehow I have a feeling that "Glonoinha" expected a "+5 Funny" rather than "+5 Insightful"
OK, but I would bet you top dollar that over 90% of sales were "AFTER the initial 5 months".
Okay, I'll take that bet. When Half-Life came out, multiplayer was viewed as something of a pleasant curiosity. All of those "game of the year" awards weren't for multiplayer, they were (rightfully so) for the well-constructed single-player game.
I know *Valve* knows this, just as they know that multiplayer and mod-ablilty give your game an extended life; as such, I'm not worried. I'm sure that HL2's single-player game will live up to the standard set by its predecessor.
I use Maya on a Win2k box at work, and I found it unreasonably difficult to use with a regular wheel mouse. I ended up getting an old-school Logitech 3-button ball mouse. The problem is that in Maya, you're constantly holding down various combinations of the 3 mouse buttons to zoom, pan, and rotate the 3d views. (This interaction scheme was developed on the SGI, which presumed a traditional 3-button mouse.)
While the wheel is a great feature, it isn't suitable for applications which require the third button to be held down for extended periods (rather than just *clicked*.)
Also Metacritic...
[shameless plug]
Tim Schafer, the man behind Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, and co-man behind Day of the Tentacle, has formed his own company: Double Fine. We're working on a 3d adventure/platformer called Psychonauts for the Xbox, which is about running through other peoples' minds. Good stuff.
Measurements show that 12% of the mass is single socks. Scientists are still trying to identify the other 88% of mass.
;)
Scientists have informally labeled the remaining 88% dark socks.
Please, in this thread more than ever, concentrate on moderating up rather than down. This issue is bound to foster a great deal of passionate discussion on all sides. If you disagree with a post in this thread, post a reply or mod up a reply that represents your point of view. This is not the time to suppress opinions we disagree with.
The only thing war has ever done is... defeat Nazism, Communism, and [hopefully] Terrorism.
One of these things is not like the other. Nazism and Communism are, respectively, political and economic ideologies. We didn't defeat these ideologies; we defeated countries that were governed by regimes who practiced these ideologies.
Terrorism is a methodology. You most certainly don't "defeat" a methodology. It's an abstraction.
Now... the West may... may be able to defeat specific militant Islamic groups. I hope so. However, please don't get wrapped up in this administration's linguistic antics.
I might argue here that Iraq doesn't fall into the category of "militant Islamic group", but I have a feeling I'll be spending a lot of time in this thread tonight, and want to survey the landscape of posts before proceeding.
... if I had the financial backing, I'd go for the Havok engine.
;)
Unless something's changed recently, the Havok engine is solely for physics. (Not that this fact would preclude you from using it if you had financial backing
Unfortunately, the Zaurus 5600 is just a little too late to take advantage of Intel's new 200 mHz Xscale bus...
It was also pretty linear and didn't take advantage of collaborative gaming. Maybe these new games can improve on that.
:)
I have high hopes for these community-based projects -- Majestic had a really particular set of problems as a subscription-based service. This won't be an issue with these new games ("experiences"?) As long as the love is there (and it usually is with such grassroots/community-based endeavors) they're set.
I see a bright road ahead for public fiction!
How come the NYT gets an obligatory 'free registration required' warning while Salon doesn't merit an 'expensive and probably futile registration required' fatal error?
Huh... I never thought about it, but I've been a Salon (paid) subscriber for a long time, yet I still haven't gotten a free NYT account. For whatever reason, I remain resentful that the Times wants all this info. Strange.
Sounds a lot like socialism to me, which is doomed to mediocrity at best. Who decides what games are "good"?
Well... do you consider the output of NPR and PBS to be mediocre? I don't; I think the system works well for them.
I know this isn't really the same, but as a relatively new Linux user, I've been surprised at the simplicity and effectiveness of...
If the dependencies are present, it really "just works". If there are unmet dependencies, the configure script tells you what's missing. Yes, it could be better... it could tell you exactly what rpm will contain the lib you need; it could auto-launch your web browser with a search on rpmfind... but it's not nearly as bad as it was, say, two years ago.
Why does a game have to go to "Major Publication" to be a success?
It's because of the way game development works -- when you get a contract with a publisher, you're basically guaranteeing that you'll have funding for the duration of your project. The publisher generally takes a significant risk when signing such contracts, because the vast majority of games never even sell enough copies to cover their cost of development.
So if you don't have that contract, you presumably have to be getting funding from elsewhere. If you're planning on trying to run a business off of game royalties, you've got a death wish.
What's the solution? I think it's something we haven't seen yet. I'd love someone to start an organization that's like NPR/PBS, where a central group accepts public donations/membership and then distributes that money to select developers. These developers then have a responsibility to make games that are, above all, good, rather than games that sell. What's the difference? The amount of risk a developer takes. If you're not constantly worried about the pressures of the marketplace, about competing with this or that game that just came out, you're free to take more risks and... dare I say... innovate?
Mmm... probably a pipe dream, though.
It still is. A good programmer and artist team can build a game for a few hundred dollars.
:)
I'm assuming you're not factoring the salaries of the programmer and artist team into that few hundred dollars...
The free market ideology has deep roots in our fundamental national consciousness.
Wait... which two were you talking about...?
Umm ... I use GNOME at home and work, and enjoy it very much, but it's a far cry from beautiful.
I think I disagree. When faced with the various options, I found GNOME to be most attractive and thematically unified of them all.
...some of this may not make sense, but trust me. I'm older and wiser than you.
At age 15: Yeah, we suck at foreign languages, big-time. If you can just get through 3 years of Spanish with C's, it'll all be fine.
At age 16: Brush your teeth and stop drinking all those sodas. I'm dead serious. Don't make that face at me, young man.
At age 17: Yes, you've just learned an important lesson -- you can be a real asshole sometimes.
At age 19: That girl in the bookstore, flirting with you? Run. Run like the wind and never look back.
At age 22: Oh, for the love of Jebus, apply to more than 7 grad schools!
At age 24: Don't drift apart from Meg just because you're both busy. She's one of the good ones; the kind worth keeping.
At age 26: Dude, it looks bad now, but things will get better within two years. Just hang on.
Sincerely,
Yourself