Wouldn't Valve rather you spend you money on games instead of operating systems?
I have said this before. I'll say it again: Walmart - with its enormous purchasing power - was never able to undercut OEM Windows on price.
In August 2010, Walmart.com stocks over 200 Windows systems - almost all running 64 Bit Windows 7 Home Premium and almost none costing more than $1000.
Think of the volume discounts that implies when an OEM goes shopping for a mobile video card.
I will have to RTFA, because I don't remember Buck Rogers ever time traveling.
On January 7, 1929, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D., the first science fiction comic strip, debuted. Coincidentally, this was also the date that the Tarzan comic strip began. The first three frames of the series set the scene for Buck's 'leap' 500 years into Earth's future:
"I was twenty years old when they stopped the world war and mustered me out of the air service. I got a job surveying the lower levels of an abandoned mine near Pittsburgh, in which the atmosphere had a peculiar pungent tang and the crumbling rock glowed strangely.? I was examining it when suddenly the roof behind me caved in and..."
Buck is rendered unconscious, and a strange gas preserves him in a sort of 'suspended animation' or coma state. He awakens and emerges from the mine in 2429 A.D., in the midst of another war. Buck Rogers
The only reason windows exists on my box is to run games, bringing the cost of games to $cost_of_games+$microsoft_tax.
For ten years Walmart carried the torch for Linux in big-box retail. For all it's enormous purchasing power, it couldn't deliver a quality product at a competitive price.
If the big names go away and leave the PC gaming industry, that would be good for PC gaming as a whole. We would see indies take over and fill the vacuum with original IP, and not just another FPS sequel.
What you will get is a flood of low budget - low risk - casual games.
Already, the big names treat the PC platform like crap
The big names have treated the single player PC gamer rather well of late: Bioshock, Dragon Age, Fallout, Mass Effect, etc.
As for iD, whatever the merits of Carmack's game engines, he hasn't released a genuinely innovative or significant PC game in the last ten years.
Before I go any further, I want to say that I feel strongly that no one has the right to not be offended. There are many in the US who feel as I do, and I believe that higher law, including the Constitution agrees with this
There is a time and a place for everything.
The US Constitution forces compromise at every turn.
The most dangerous legal mistake a geek can make is to think that those who have framed and interpreted the Constitution over 185 years have ever thought in terms of absolutes.
They are subject to the laws of whatever state they reside (say: Vermont) plus the central, general government if their goods cross state lines. In my example the business would not be subject to foreign government outside of Vermont, just the same way a Polish business is not subject to the governments of Germany or France or other EU states.
You've forgotten that goods crossing international borders have always been subject to export controls and export duties, import controls and import duties.
The wood stove you import from Vermont still has to meet local fire codes and emission standards.
You may own it, but you can't get a permit to install it. If you install it anyway, your fire insurance goes up in smoke.
Explain to me how micro-companies and nerds in their basements can write shit like Nexuiz, Penumbra, Tremulous, Urban Terror, Warsow, Flightgear, TORCS, Sauerbraten, etc. while the big guys can't seem to pull it off? The only thing the big names do better is textures and single player campaigns. Your argument and theirs is pure bunk.
Nexuiz is based on the Quake 1 engine.
It is more than a little disingenuous to claim that it is only textures and single player that separate these games from the A list commercial titles.
Take away the football helmets and pads and you might get more contusions and cuts, but less brain damage; it would be more like rugby with the players hitting each other much more softly
College football had become so lethal around 1900 that the game came within an inch of being abandoned.
The 1905 season...brought its rash of casualties. There were twenty-three football deaths. Only a handful took place in intercollegiate play, but one in particular set in motion the movement to reform the game. In a match between Union College and New York University, Harold Moore of Union died after being kicked in the head. Chancellor Henry M. MacCracken of NYU seized the opportunity to summon a reform conference.
In the 1906 season and for two years following, the verdict on the "new football" was generally favorable. In spite of fluctuations in the injury count, the number of deaths dropped to fourteen, fifteen, and ten.
Then, in the fall of 1909, the trend toward a safer game abruptly reversed itself. In a match between Harvard and West Point, the Army captain, Eugene Byrne, exhausted by continual plays to his side of the line, was fatally injured. Earl Wilson of the Naval Academy was paralyzed and later died as a result of a flying tackle. And the University of Virginia's halfback Archer Christian died after a game against Georgetown, probably from a cerebral hemorrhage suffered in a plunge through the line. . "Does the public need any more proof," wrote the Washington Post, "that football is a brutal, savage, murderous sport? Is it necessary to kill many more promising young men before the game is revised or stopped altogether?" President David Starr Jordan of Stanford referred to football as "Rugby's American pervert..."
Early headgear, seldom worn consistently, shielded the ears and surface of the head but gave inadequate protection to the skull and brain. After World War I a sponge-rubber lining was added to the crown of the helmet, and by the late 1930s a sturdy leather helmet with an inner felt lining was being used. But it was not until 1943 that all players were required to wear headgear. The plastic helmet, which distributes shock more evenly, was introduced in the 1940s amid objections reminiscent of those that accompanied the original solely leather helmets. Some critics argued--and still do--that the hard plastic helmet, used as an offensive weapon, has as much potential for causing as for preventing serious injuries.Inventing Modern Football
And you know that the other evidence wasn't faulty, how? Police make mistakes, witnesses lie or remember things wrong, etc etc.
You can't be certain of anything.
But neither can you retry every case infinitely because there are some remaining doubts. There will always be doubts.
The appeals court is a court of law.
It's only job is to decide as a matter of law whether a conviction should stand.
You raise your objections to matters of fact or opinion in pre-trial proceedings. You raise them again at trial. But you must get your objections on record before your case goes to appeal.
It is a lot to ask an appellate judge to believe that matters which seemed inconsequential to you then should be given any weight now.
Requiring Internet Explorer users to install Chrome Frame for its WebGL and JavaScript engine is just as much a logistical barrier as requiring them to install Silverlight
More of a barrier.
Silverlight can be installed through Microsoft Update. Silverlight powers Netflix. The Windows 9 Beta is only a month away.
A high speed rail network should be targeting air travel. There are many short haul air routes (e.g. New York to Washington) where high speed rail could provide an comparable door-to-door journey time
You have to ask which routes will see enough traffic to be economically viable.
The Northeast Corridor, Boston to Washington, has a population of 50 million. 931 per square mile. The US averages 80 per square mile. Northeast megalopolis.
The Northeast Corridor is the political and financial capital of the US. It has vast recreational and cultural resources. There are many reasons to be on the move here.
But geography and culture are rarely as hospitable to inter-city rail.
Not those who went to a prostitute, urinated behind a tree in a park, got accused of something with no proof except some ten year old saying so, people named as rapists by some teenage girl who got caught by her father at a party she wasn't supposed to be at, naked and covered in two guys' semen, and made up the story to try and get out of trouble...
The last time I came across a rant like this on Slashdot, I had a long look at my county's public registry of sex offenders.
No one made the list because they were caught urinating in a public park.
There are three to be found within 2 miles of where I live, all male, all Level 1 - considered low-risk in New York.
Sexual abuse in the second degree. (12 yr old Girl) (2 blocks) Sexual abuse in the first degree. (5 yr old Girl) Sexual misconduct. (27 yr old Woman)
Low risk of recidivism does not mean that original charge was trivial. You can be convicted of first degree sexual abuse of a five year old, marked by the use of force and coercion and still be Level 1.
These registries are not an easy read - but they will in one half hour erase everything Slashdot has taught you to believe about sex crimes and child pornography.
Show me where h264 is a requirement in the HTML5 spec.
H.264 is deeply - deeply - entrenched outside the browser.
The list of H.264 licensors and licensees reads like a Fortune 500 list of the global giants in OEM manufacturing, consumer and industrial electronics.
A search of Google Shopping for "H.264" returns 42,000 hits. 125 pages of relevant results.
The solution is to disable the card reader in your device manager till the installation is complete. Or you could do it your way if you really like clicking...
That's fine and dandy.
But the installer let you proceed without any warning - and the solution to the problem wasn't to be found on the Ubuntu WUBI site.
Where it belongs.
WUBI - remember - was advertised as a safe and simple way to install and uninstall Ubuntu Linux like any ordinary Windows program.
MAFIAA go after casual downloaders, destroying people for having downloaded a few songs which are usually freely available on the radio anyway. In the meantime, people are scanning and selling other people's books for profit - and getting away with it. Wasn't this exactly the sort of thing that copyright was supposed to prevent in the first place?
The rights agencies have money and organization.
The writer may have to pursue an infringement on his own if his publisher is unable is unable or unwilling to do so.
I think most here know it is never a "few" downloads or - more likely - uploads that will land you in court - but rather a modest sampling that both sides and the presiding judge have agreed is convenient and practical to litigate.
If a song is freely available on the radio, the obvious question for a jury to ask is "Why are you downloading an infringing copy and offering it in turn to an indeterminate number of your closest friends on the P2P nets?"
You are "lost" only if you haven't the wit to settle out of court before it is too late.
It's generally pretty obvious when your ship is sinking. Unless you chosen have a showboat for a lawyer.
Slashdot Mirror
iD software has historically produced Linux versions of their games; I remember fondly playing the quake(s), and doom 3 under Linux.
The problem here is that for the better part of twenty years iD has released almost nothing of interest but variations on Doom and Quake.
You can't build a successful PC gaming platform around a single genre.
Wouldn't Valve rather you spend you money on games instead of operating systems?
I have said this before. I'll say it again:
Walmart - with its enormous purchasing power - was never able to undercut OEM Windows on price.
In August 2010, Walmart.com stocks over 200 Windows systems - almost all running 64 Bit Windows 7 Home Premium and almost none costing more than $1000.
Think of the volume discounts that implies when an OEM goes shopping for a mobile video card.
I will have to RTFA, because I don't remember Buck Rogers ever time traveling.
On January 7, 1929, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century A.D., the first science fiction comic strip, debuted. Coincidentally, this was also the date that the Tarzan comic strip began. The first three frames of the series set the scene for Buck's 'leap' 500 years into Earth's future:
"I was twenty years old when they stopped the world war and mustered me out of the air service. I got a job surveying the lower levels of an abandoned mine near Pittsburgh, in which the atmosphere had a peculiar pungent tang and the crumbling rock glowed strangely.? I was examining it when suddenly the roof behind me caved in and..."
Buck is rendered unconscious, and a strange gas preserves him in a sort of 'suspended animation' or coma state. He awakens and emerges from the mine in 2429 A.D., in the midst of another war. Buck Rogers
The only reason windows exists on my box is to run games, bringing the cost of games to $cost_of_games+$microsoft_tax.
For ten years Walmart carried the torch for Linux in big-box retail. For all it's enormous purchasing power, it couldn't deliver a quality product at a competitive price.
So much for the "Microsoft Tax."
If the big names go away and leave the PC gaming industry, that would be good for PC gaming as a whole. We would see indies take over and fill the vacuum with original IP, and not just another FPS sequel.
What you will get is a flood of low budget - low risk - casual games.
Already, the big names treat the PC platform like crap
The big names have treated the single player PC gamer rather well of late: Bioshock, Dragon Age, Fallout, Mass Effect, etc.
As for iD, whatever the merits of Carmack's game engines, he hasn't released a genuinely innovative or significant PC game in the last ten years.
These devices don't happen in a vacuum. If there is a need, there is a market.
But the market must be convenient and profitable to service. Not enough money? Too much hassle? You look for better opportunities elsewhere.
Before I go any further, I want to say that I feel strongly that no one has the right to not be offended. There are many in the US who feel as I do, and I believe that higher law, including the Constitution agrees with this
There is a time and a place for everything.
The US Constitution forces compromise at every turn.
The most dangerous legal mistake a geek can make is to think that those who have framed and interpreted the Constitution over 185 years have ever thought in terms of absolutes.
They are subject to the laws of whatever state they reside (say: Vermont) plus the central, general government if their goods cross state lines. In my example the business would not be subject to foreign government outside of Vermont, just the same way a Polish business is not subject to the governments of Germany or France or other EU states.
You've forgotten that goods crossing international borders have always been subject to export controls and export duties, import controls and import duties.
The wood stove you import from Vermont still has to meet local fire codes and emission standards.
You may own it, but you can't get a permit to install it. If you install it anyway, your fire insurance goes up in smoke.
I see that the effectiveness of DRM hasn't changed in 800 years.
Medieval books were often chained in place.
I can't imagine it would have been patricularly healthy to cross the fuedal lord who commisioned a uniquely bound and decorated Book of Hours.
Explain to me how micro-companies and nerds in their basements can write shit like Nexuiz, Penumbra, Tremulous, Urban Terror, Warsow, Flightgear, TORCS, Sauerbraten, etc. while the big guys can't seem to pull it off? The only thing the big names do better is textures and single player campaigns. Your argument and theirs is pure bunk.
Nexuiz is based on the Quake 1 engine.
It is more than a little disingenuous to claim that it is only textures and single player that separate these games from the A list commercial titles.
I don't think they are his stats.
They aren't. For comparison: Silverlight Plugin Version Support
Unless you are the president or a singer or actor. No one cares.
Unless you have a teenage daughter like Elizabeth Smart. The notion that only celebrities are stalked is nonsense.
College football had become so lethal around 1900 that the game came within an inch of being abandoned.
The 1905 season...brought its rash of casualties. There were twenty-three football deaths. Only a handful took place in intercollegiate play, but one in particular set in motion the movement to reform the game. In a match between Union College and New York University, Harold Moore of Union died after being kicked in the head. Chancellor Henry M. MacCracken of NYU seized the opportunity to summon a reform conference.
In the 1906 season and for two years following, the verdict on the "new football" was generally favorable. In spite of fluctuations in the injury count, the number of deaths dropped to fourteen, fifteen, and ten.
Then, in the fall of 1909, the trend toward a safer game abruptly reversed itself. In a match between Harvard and West Point, the Army captain, Eugene Byrne, exhausted by continual plays to his side of the line, was fatally injured. Earl Wilson of the Naval Academy was paralyzed and later died as a result of a flying tackle. And the University of Virginia's halfback Archer Christian died after a game against Georgetown, probably from a cerebral hemorrhage suffered in a plunge through the line. . "Does the public need any more proof," wrote the Washington Post, "that football is a brutal, savage, murderous sport? Is it necessary to kill many more promising young men before the game is revised or stopped altogether?" President David Starr Jordan of Stanford referred to football as "Rugby's American pervert..."
Early headgear, seldom worn consistently, shielded the ears and surface of the head but gave inadequate protection to the skull and brain. After World War I a sponge-rubber lining was added to the crown of the helmet, and by the late 1930s a sturdy leather helmet with an inner felt lining was being used. But it was not until 1943 that all players were required to wear headgear. The plastic helmet, which distributes shock more evenly, was introduced in the 1940s amid objections reminiscent of those that accompanied the original solely leather helmets. Some critics argued--and still do--that the hard plastic helmet, used as an offensive weapon, has as much potential for causing as for preventing serious injuries. Inventing Modern Football
And you know that the other evidence wasn't faulty, how? Police make mistakes, witnesses lie or remember things wrong, etc etc.
You can't be certain of anything.
But neither can you retry every case infinitely because there are some remaining doubts. There will always be doubts.
The appeals court is a court of law.
It's only job is to decide as a matter of law whether a conviction should stand.
You raise your objections to matters of fact or opinion in pre-trial proceedings. You raise them again at trial. But you must get your objections on record before your case goes to appeal.
It is a lot to ask an appellate judge to believe that matters which seemed inconsequential to you then should be given any weight now.
The codec is the one with DRM, so that rules out H.264, Theora, and WebM. Got any in mind?
Google Shopping returns 40,000 hits for H.264.
Mobile devices. Processional production. Home video. Webcam video. Industrial and security applications.
It doesn't make sense to ignore the codec that has the widest possible support outside of the geek's tight little open source web.
Requiring Internet Explorer users to install Chrome Frame for its WebGL and JavaScript engine is just as much a logistical barrier as requiring them to install Silverlight
More of a barrier.
Silverlight can be installed through Microsoft Update. Silverlight powers Netflix. The Windows 9 Beta is only a month away.
The availability is 98% Flash, 5-10% Silverlight.
Where are you getting your numbers for Silverlight?
Rich Internet Application Statistics To my eyes, this looks more like 60% than 5%
The automobile is most certainly not more of a ball and chain than an independence-granting device.
Our village Main Street is barely two blocks long.
But in 1900 we had a three story brick department store. Why?
Because the nearest city was 15 miles south on the electric line and the big city 50 miles south - after you made the transfer to the steam cars.
In the city, you made your rounds by streetcar. You couldn't carry anything, really.
So you shopped locally - at a healthy mark-up - or paid for downtown merchant delivery service.
Trains win in every densely populated region, hands down.
What do you mean by "dense?"
Most American cities evolved after the invention of the railroad.
Middle class migration to the suburbs was well advanced before the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.
That is, after all, why there is a Brooklyn Bridge.
There are many population centers in the West and South that were scarcely visible before the invention of the automobile.
They never had a chance to approach a bare fraction of the density of Manhattan Island.
The cliche that Los Angeles was a suburb in search of a city held more than a grain of truth.
A high speed rail network should be targeting air travel. There are many short haul air routes (e.g. New York to Washington) where high speed rail could provide an comparable door-to-door journey time
You have to ask which routes will see enough traffic to be economically viable.
The Northeast Corridor, Boston to Washington, has a population of 50 million. 931 per square mile. The US averages 80 per square mile. Northeast megalopolis.
The Northeast Corridor is the political and financial capital of the US. It has vast recreational and cultural resources. There are many reasons to be on the move here.
But geography and culture are rarely as hospitable to inter-city rail.
Not those who went to a prostitute, urinated behind a tree in a park, got accused of something with no proof except some ten year old saying so, people named as rapists by some teenage girl who got caught by her father at a party she wasn't supposed to be at, naked and covered in two guys' semen, and made up the story to try and get out of trouble...
The last time I came across a rant like this on Slashdot, I had a long look at my county's public registry of sex offenders.
361 in all. 359 male.
75 Level 3 - High Risk. 130 Level 2 - Moderate Risk.
No one made the list because they were caught urinating in a public park.
There are three to be found within 2 miles of where I live, all male, all Level 1 - considered low-risk in New York.
Sexual abuse in the second degree. (12 yr old Girl) (2 blocks)
Sexual abuse in the first degree. (5 yr old Girl)
Sexual misconduct. (27 yr old Woman)
Low risk of recidivism does not mean that original charge was trivial. You can be convicted of first degree sexual abuse of a five year old, marked by the use of force and coercion and still be Level 1.
These registries are not an easy read - but they will in one half hour erase everything Slashdot has taught you to believe about sex crimes and child pornography.
Show me where h264 is a requirement in the HTML5 spec.
H.264 is deeply - deeply - entrenched outside the browser.
The list of H.264 licensors and licensees reads like a Fortune 500 list of the global giants in OEM manufacturing, consumer and industrial electronics.
A search of Google Shopping for "H.264" returns 42,000 hits. 125 pages of relevant results.
It's kind of like selling a limited service as "unlimited".
"Unlimited Internet" is phrase which took hold in the 14K dial-up days when AOL began offering unmetered service for a flat monthly rate of $19.95.
The perfect compliment to your unmetered local calling plan.
The solution is to disable the card reader in your device manager till the installation is complete. Or you could do it your way if you really like clicking...
That's fine and dandy.
But the installer let you proceed without any warning - and the solution to the problem wasn't to be found on the Ubuntu WUBI site.
Where it belongs.
WUBI - remember - was advertised as a safe and simple way to install and uninstall Ubuntu Linux like any ordinary Windows program.
MAFIAA go after casual downloaders, destroying people for having downloaded a few songs which are usually freely available on the radio anyway. In the meantime, people are scanning and selling other people's books for profit - and getting away with it. Wasn't this exactly the sort of thing that copyright was supposed to prevent in the first place?
The rights agencies have money and organization.
The writer may have to pursue an infringement on his own if his publisher is unable is unable or unwilling to do so.
I think most here know it is never a "few" downloads or - more likely - uploads that will land you in court - but rather a modest sampling that both sides and the presiding judge have agreed is convenient and practical to litigate.
If a song is freely available on the radio, the obvious question for a jury to ask is "Why are you downloading an infringing copy and offering it in turn to an indeterminate number of your closest friends on the P2P nets?"
You are "lost" only if you haven't the wit to settle out of court before it is too late.
It's generally pretty obvious when your ship is sinking. Unless you chosen have a showboat for a lawyer.