But interaction's what makes games games, surely? Music, graphics, movies, storytelling are art already; whether they exist in a game or not doesn't really change a thing unless you're also reluctant to grant synthesizers musical instrument status.
To declare games art because they can contain some or all of these elements seems to me to be like declaring some work of literature art because of the picture on the cover. It doesn't actually respect literature as art but merely concedes that a medium used to contain literature is furthermore capable of containing art.
Music that responds to, enhances, adapts to the gameplay - now that's a quality of games, and one that can't be "exported" to CD. That would therefore be an aspect of games as art. Not the "static" soundtrack CD, not even the music itself, but the way music and sound effects are integrated with the game and respond to the player's interaction with the game.
In other words, shouldn't games, if/when they're examined as art, be given a chance to be artistic on their own terms rather than as a new medium for already-established art forms?
And by the way, do you pronounce Suse like Dr. Seuss or like Suzy Creamcheese?
Approximately like ZOO-Zeh, I'd say, at least in Germany. Can't think of anything English that it'd rhyme with.
True, but Gmail won't handle several different POP, IMAP, NNTP and RSS accounts/feeds in a single, drag-and-drop-capable, somewhat customisable interface (if I'm not mistaken)...
I installed the autopackage, like it so far, but it crashes whenever I try to load an.odt or.sxw file. Something feels wrong about exporting OpenOffice documents to MS Word format just to re-open them in Abiword (I know I've imported OO docs in earlier versions, although some formatting was lost). Excuse me for being tired, lazy and a luser, but where/how do I get the import/export filter (or any other) plugins? Abisource just directs me to the main download page, which has nothing like these, and apt-get won't get me the current version.
I was using TB in part because it was trivial to set it up so it would use the same "physical" local folders on a FAT32 partition shared between Kubuntu and XP. Since I realised I was only using Windows for music apps and the occasional game anymore, I actually switched to Kontact - but the same principles apply, and I'd rather use TB, Eudora, OE, Sylpheed or what have you than webmail.
My two primary email accounts are free and ISP-independent, so that's not a problem. And both have web interfaces, so I can still check them when I'm wherever. Best of both worlds, et cetera.
At home, though, it's always POP3/SMTP. I prefer having offline access to my email. It's convenient, and I'm just not comfortable having all these lengthy private conversations lying around "outside".
And I like having email and usenet (and RSS feeds, should I ever adopt that habit) together. I only follow a couple groups, never downloaded any binaries either, and don't really need a dedicated newsreader.
I also find it much easier to manage email in a program actually built for that very purpose. The UI beats "even" Gmail. And why would I put a website between myself and my communication?
And I don't want ads anywhere near my email, much less inside them the way most webmailers seem to enforce it.
So personally I just don't see the advantage of using webmail. It's nice to have a web interface available in "times of need", but it's been an emergency solution (well, ever since I learned how to configure an email client anyway).
Wow, that's even harder to remember than my own domain name (which is fine by me). I keep thinking JamLoo! or Roomba! -- besides, exlamation mark names mess up my punctuation!. Ah, well.
It has been/is being argued that people who are getting "sex change" operations do so precisely because their brains are of that "other" gender and therefore incongruent with the body's. But I lack the IQ^W background to verify or disprove this.
None of the above, I think. If it's pronounced like the first name "Suse", which is the only way I've ever heard it pronounced (here in Germany), it might be best transcribed as "ZOO-Zeh", maybe "ZOO-Zuh". The "e" is a "schwa"-sound, rather like the "e" in "the" (not the "theeeee"-the. obviously).
I also hit the back button, because, frankly, I was a trifle pissed that MS had snuck this thing in via assorted blah about speed/security/whatever improvements and wanted to verify if they'd really been this "naughty" or if I'd just not read their blurb carefully enough. It gave me the list of updates, which I then successfully installed. And I hadn't used any hacks. Seems that at this particular point (regular Windows Update) no WGA validation was required (or does it run silently? I'm pretty sure I have a "genuine" copy.) Not that that says anything about the functionality of...anything else.
It's pretty easy to figure out because so many people are pissed off about it.:}
But I wasn't trying to prove or refute the desktop/multimedia-worthiness of Linux or the point the original poster made. (Dualhead? Edit xorg.conf and Xresources; instructions found on a Gentoo and a Mozilla website. And PDFs and Xine videos are still twice as wide as they should be. Compile something? Track down a gajillion libs and -devel packages and pray your autoconf is 1.9.whatever instead of 1.9.the_other. Scanning? First locate the firmware and edit some script regarding its whereabouts. Et cetera. No, it's not been a smooth ride.)
I was just hoping that maybe, perhaps, this information is in some way useful to the original poster (Xine issues, no GUI with MPlayer). He's probably fifty times more experienced than I am, but knowing a few extra repositories does make SuSE-life much easier.
Incidentally, I didn't really find it that much easier with Windows until I discovered "codec packs" bundling every codec under the sun with Media Player Classic and Quicktime and Real alternatives. A fresh install won't play most of my movie files either, not to mention niche or retro audio formats from Ogg Vorbis or FLAC down to XM or SID. Yeah, I do understand those aren't quite as relevant as MP3 or DVD support. But it took me some googling in either case.
I also use SuSE 9.3. After downloading the four Multimedia packs from YOU (no MP3 support otherwise, etc.), I added
pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/9.3 on ftp.gwdg.de and suse/9.3 on packman.iu-bremen.de to YaST's installation sources and installed MPlayer, w32codec-all, mplayerplug-in (for Mozilla/Firefox), and kmplayer (KDE frontend for MPlayer/FFMpeg/Xine and much cleaner than the default MPlayer GUI). That was all, I think. (It must have been simple; after all, I got it to work!) Xine plays Xvid, Divx, mov, wmv... as well now (but I really prefer KMplayer).
The graphical configuration tools in (say) SuSE or Mandrake already work pretty well, but it might help if they'd actively guide you toward the relevant config files just in case the need arises (as it inevitably does; or maybe that's just me).
Obviously it's not particularly clear for a 'newbie' what file you're supposed to mess around with, or how (how could you possibly guess that a non-commented option in/etc/X11/Xresources can fix the font size problem in the Firefox UI?).
So I wish YAST and its ilk had (a) an "open config file in text editor" button, and (b) a "view config file before/after applying changes" option. Those would help me more than pretending no manual editing is necessary, and they'd put me on the right track (even if it's just by giving me an idea what to google for.)
E.g. konqueror has this feature called multiple view profiles, one for file management and one for browsing. Very nice, but i *really* would want to have a separate home URL for each profile.
Settings -> Save View Profile "Such-and-Such"; tick the "Save URLs in profile" box - isn't that what you mean? (Not sure I understood the problem.)
Okay, that does sound worse than anything I've seen so far unless I've simply learned to *just not notice* it anymore (I'm not ruling it out). Say, is there sponsored housing already? Like, with a huge telescreen on the living room wall but cheaper rent?
Just wait until in-game ads contain important clues required to overcome some obstacle in the game, or watching them gets you experience points or mana or has subtle effects on NPC interactions...
Played an adventure game once where you had to get the right makeover before NPCs would respect you (it was some sort of parallel new wave universe). Maybe watching some ads could've been the easier route compared to save/restore trial and error. (I don't remember if it really was trial and error, but still.)
Well, for all I know that might've been done and subsequently abandoned already.
Slashdot Mirror
But interaction's what makes games games, surely? Music, graphics, movies, storytelling are art already; whether they exist in a game or not doesn't really change a thing unless you're also reluctant to grant synthesizers musical instrument status.
To declare games art because they can contain some or all of these elements seems to me to be like declaring some work of literature art because of the picture on the cover. It doesn't actually respect literature as art but merely concedes that a medium used to contain literature is furthermore capable of containing art.
Music that responds to, enhances, adapts to the gameplay - now that's a quality of games, and one that can't be "exported" to CD. That would therefore be an aspect of games as art. Not the "static" soundtrack CD, not even the music itself, but the way music and sound effects are integrated with the game and respond to the player's interaction with the game.
In other words, shouldn't games, if/when they're examined as art, be given a chance to be artistic on their own terms rather than as a new medium for already-established art forms?
IMHO, and so on...
And by the way, do you pronounce Suse like Dr. Seuss or like Suzy Creamcheese?
Approximately like ZOO-Zeh, I'd say, at least in Germany. Can't think of anything English that it'd rhyme with.
True, but Gmail won't handle several different POP, IMAP, NNTP and RSS accounts/feeds in a single, drag-and-drop-capable, somewhat customisable interface (if I'm not mistaken)...
Thanks. I'm on (K)Ubuntu Hoary (5.04), but I suppose I'll upgrade eventually.
I installed the autopackage, like it so far, but it crashes whenever I try to load an .odt or .sxw file. Something feels wrong about exporting OpenOffice documents to MS Word format just to re-open them in Abiword (I know I've imported OO docs in earlier versions, although some formatting was lost). Excuse me for being tired, lazy and a luser, but where/how do I get the import/export filter (or any other) plugins? Abisource just directs me to the main download page, which has nothing like these, and apt-get won't get me the current version.
You don't have to use the popup player, you know. Besides, Firefox hasn't blocked it anyway ;)
I was using TB in part because it was trivial to set it up so it would use the same "physical" local folders on a FAT32 partition shared between Kubuntu and XP. Since I realised I was only using Windows for music apps and the occasional game anymore, I actually switched to Kontact - but the same principles apply, and I'd rather use TB, Eudora, OE, Sylpheed or what have you than webmail.
My two primary email accounts are free and ISP-independent, so that's not a problem. And both have web interfaces, so I can still check them when I'm wherever. Best of both worlds, et cetera.
At home, though, it's always POP3/SMTP. I prefer having offline access to my email. It's convenient, and I'm just not comfortable having all these lengthy private conversations lying around "outside".
And I like having email and usenet (and RSS feeds, should I ever adopt that habit) together. I only follow a couple groups, never downloaded any binaries either, and don't really need a dedicated newsreader.
I also find it much easier to manage email in a program actually built for that very purpose. The UI beats "even" Gmail. And why would I put a website between myself and my communication?
And I don't want ads anywhere near my email, much less inside them the way most webmailers seem to enforce it.
So personally I just don't see the advantage of using webmail. It's nice to have a web interface available in "times of need", but it's been an emergency solution (well, ever since I learned how to configure an email client anyway).
Whoa. Thanks.
Wow, that's even harder to remember than my own domain name (which is fine by me). I keep thinking JamLoo! or Roomba! -- besides, exlamation mark names mess up my punctuation!. Ah, well.
But what will you do with it once it's yours? :p
It has been/is being argued that people who are getting "sex change" operations do so precisely because their brains are of that "other" gender and therefore incongruent with the body's. But I lack the IQ^W background to verify or disprove this.
None of the above, I think. If it's pronounced like the first name "Suse", which is the only way I've ever heard it pronounced (here in Germany), it might be best transcribed as "ZOO-Zeh", maybe "ZOO-Zuh". The "e" is a "schwa"-sound, rather like the "e" in "the" (not the "theeeee"-the. obviously).
Just a "start" logo and a search bar.
British slang for "scientist".
I also hit the back button, because, frankly, I was a trifle pissed that MS had snuck this thing in via assorted blah about speed/security/whatever improvements and wanted to verify if they'd really been this "naughty" or if I'd just not read their blurb carefully enough. It gave me the list of updates, which I then successfully installed. And I hadn't used any hacks. Seems that at this particular point (regular Windows Update) no WGA validation was required (or does it run silently? I'm pretty sure I have a "genuine" copy.) Not that that says anything about the functionality of ...anything else.
You can run KDE on Windows already... okay, not quite what you had in mind, I suppose.
It's pretty easy to figure out because so many people are pissed off about it. :}
But I wasn't trying to prove or refute the desktop/multimedia-worthiness of Linux or the point the original poster made. (Dualhead? Edit xorg.conf and Xresources; instructions found on a Gentoo and a Mozilla website. And PDFs and Xine videos are still twice as wide as they should be. Compile something? Track down a gajillion libs and -devel packages and pray your autoconf is 1.9.whatever instead of 1.9.the_other. Scanning? First locate the firmware and edit some script regarding its whereabouts. Et cetera. No, it's not been a smooth ride.)
I was just hoping that maybe, perhaps, this information is in some way useful to the original poster (Xine issues, no GUI with MPlayer). He's probably fifty times more experienced than I am, but knowing a few extra repositories does make SuSE-life much easier.
Incidentally, I didn't really find it that much easier with Windows until I discovered "codec packs" bundling every codec under the sun with Media Player Classic and Quicktime and Real alternatives. A fresh install won't play most of my movie files either, not to mention niche or retro audio formats from Ogg Vorbis or FLAC down to XM or SID. Yeah, I do understand those aren't quite as relevant as MP3 or DVD support. But it took me some googling in either case.
I also use SuSE 9.3. After downloading the four Multimedia packs from YOU (no MP3 support otherwise, etc.), I added pub/linux/misc/suser-guru/rpm/9.3 on ftp.gwdg.de and suse/9.3 on packman.iu-bremen.de to YaST's installation sources and installed MPlayer, w32codec-all, mplayerplug-in (for Mozilla/Firefox), and kmplayer (KDE frontend for MPlayer/FFMpeg/Xine and much cleaner than the default MPlayer GUI). That was all, I think. (It must have been simple; after all, I got it to work!) Xine plays Xvid, Divx, mov, wmv... as well now (but I really prefer KMplayer).
The graphical configuration tools in (say) SuSE or Mandrake already work pretty well, but it might help if they'd actively guide you toward the relevant config files just in case the need arises (as it inevitably does; or maybe that's just me).
/etc/X11/Xresources can fix the font size problem in the Firefox UI?).
Obviously it's not particularly clear for a 'newbie' what file you're supposed to mess around with, or how (how could you possibly guess that a non-commented option in
So I wish YAST and its ilk had (a) an "open config file in text editor" button, and (b) a "view config file before/after applying changes" option. Those would help me more than pretending no manual editing is necessary, and they'd put me on the right track (even if it's just by giving me an idea what to google for.)
Why not have our cake and eat it too?
Process != service!
E.g. konqueror has this feature called multiple view profiles, one for file management and one for browsing. Very nice, but i *really* would want to have a separate home URL for each profile.
Settings -> Save View Profile "Such-and-Such"; tick the "Save URLs in profile" box - isn't that what you mean? (Not sure I understood the problem.)
Ugh. I've never played Nethack with the "mail daemon/scrolls of mail" activated and configured, but it's beginning to sound like a bad idea.
Okay, that does sound worse than anything I've seen so far unless I've simply learned to *just not notice* it anymore (I'm not ruling it out). Say, is there sponsored housing already? Like, with a huge telescreen on the living room wall but cheaper rent?
Just wait until in-game ads contain important clues required to overcome some obstacle in the game, or watching them gets you experience points or mana or has subtle effects on NPC interactions...
Played an adventure game once where you had to get the right makeover before NPCs would respect you (it was some sort of parallel new wave universe). Maybe watching some ads could've been the easier route compared to save/restore trial and error. (I don't remember if it really was trial and error, but still.)
Well, for all I know that might've been done and subsequently abandoned already.
Oh god, how trollishly unfunny WAS that? I'm going back to bed. Sorry. :wq!