Well, I don't know about Debian, I've never gotten it successfully installed. I also haven't worked too hard at it. Mandrake is great.;)
With the next release I'm planning on mirroring the package repository locally and doing my software installs and crap from there (after I clear some space off my hard drive. I thought that 120GB would mean I had some free space...). In any case...
Who are you distributing it to? Are you a computer store wanting to carry a boxed edition, or are you a sysadmin wanting to set it up for your company, or what? There's plenty of us who'd like to help you figure out what to use, but it would help if we knew what you were shooting for...
Not even the whole installer, since the very last dialog tells you about it.;) Personally, I've quit listening when people say "I installed Redhat and ran it for a few days...". I tune them out and wait for them to spiral down, and then say "You didn't try it, so don't waste my time telling me how bad linux is until you really try it, and no, dual-booting is *not* trying it."
8.1 - solid (once the Invalid EIP init workaround for K7T266 chips was used)
Most games didn't start on my machine. Most applications, however, worked fine. I threw windows out over this one.
8.2 - flaky (on my system at least)
Solid, but some games (like Armagetron) still didn't work at all, segfaulting on startup. I couldn't even compile them from source and have them work. Solid if I didn't do anything "extra" to the box. Started running as a server with this one as well.
9.0 - OK
Solid, everything worked, and worked well even when building software from source. I think they stopped doing their special Mandrake stuff that made the distribution completely incompatible with other distributions. Many redhat rpms also installed flawlessly.
9.1 - solid. Excellent work
Solid until I installed Macromedia's flash plugin. Then X became very unstable and frequently crashed, Mozilla wouldn't let me type stuff into the address bar frequently, and reboot fixed it.:( Frustrating. I could've digged deeper, but the problem didn't manifest until a month or so before 9.2, so I just waited.
9.2 - flaky
Very solid, I'm very pleased with it, with two minor caveats. You'll find one of them on my website in the article about Windows vs Linux Installation. The other is that when installing an rpm, some of them break the applications menu, requiring me to load up menudrak to take care of it. There's an update for it, I just haven't downloaded it. I'm waiting for 10.0 Official to be available to non-club members (and hopefully this summer I'll finally have money to join the club). However, the system is extremely solid. I've done some things to hurt it, too, and it's doing fine. Still running as a server, but no longer a production server (moved my website to a hosted service).
I dont contribute to OSS because the idea of working for corporations (Mandrake, Redhat, etc) for free is stupid.
So give your money directly to the developers, eh? But that won't entitle you to download Mandrake 10 before it hits general availability. Your argument is pointless because fuckin' nobody says "I'll write some open source software so Mandrake, RedHat, IBM, et al, can wrap it up and sell it and I get nothing." If that's your only sticking point on contributing to open source software, I suggest you take another look at your value system, because it appears to be mising some things. Those of us that do contribute don't do it because we want to work for free, we do it for a variety of reasons, usually related to making good software.
But I suspect that it all boils down to one thing that Dave Mustaine said years ago. When asked why he played guitar, he said something to the effect of "Nobody plays guitar because they want to. I play because I have to." Programming is exactly the same. If I don't write at least 10 lines of code a month (not a lot, admittedly), I get real cranky, pissy, and generally unpleasant. Same happens if I don't play my guitar at least once a week (if I seem to be cranky right now, it's not for lack of coding, it's for lack of guitar).
I read it that way too, and surprisingly, felt reassured about Java. Hrm.
I also had no choice but to agree with him that RMS's definition of Free violates some law of thermodynamics.:) I've always wanted proof that perpetual motion can exist, and now I have it.;)
Apple not only has a more solid model of music ownership with itunes, they will have done it first. Luckily this project is going to show up late to the party when they unveil it two years from now.
Emphasis mine, of course.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I read the first article (well, the paper about MPEG and OSS) and couldn't help but think he was trying to say "let's work together, but we're not budging". And that's not helping the problem anyway. Compromise, right? Both sides have to give.
When I read the interview, I couldn't help but think he was right in a lot of ways, such as when he talks about how the experience isn't any different now than it was before digital music (at least, before digital music like we know it now). Sure we can rip our CDs and carry them around on a series of nice-looking and nice-working mp3 players (I have one of my own, but it's CD-based:( ). Great. But the experience hasn't changed. Not until I buy that $400 device from those River people, anyway. But I also couldn't help but think "too little too late". If they had worried about the DRM stuff 10 years ago, all the problems we're having now would have been averted.
See, it looks to me like he's honestly trying to keep fair use rights, even if he's not formally saying "fair use". He wants the digital experience to be realized by everyone, and he knows that content producers (or in the case of record labels, content distributors, blech) have to come on board for it to really work. It's pretty obvious (and I think this guy knows it, based on the interview) that people want the "digital experience" for which he's trying to create a standard and therefore an opportunity, and people are trying to make it happen on their own, and even having limited success (I must admit that my own music collection is more portable than it has ever been and more accessible in the process, and I've done the same with my movie collection).
The problem is that it's too little too late. He mentioned the stalemate he's trying to resolve, but I don't see it resolving his way. For one thing, I'm not jumping on his bandwagon without at least some solid clarification, and if he and the content producers/distributors want to get my money, they must give their part of the compromise, whatever that may be. I'll give my part, I'm offering it! But I want something in return, and if there's anything I've learned about the content producers/distributors, they need to give first. 'Cause if they don't, then I'll give and give and give, and they'll take and take and take, and before you know it I've given them everything for nothing in return.
Compromise or obsolescence will resolve this stalemate, and neither side seems to be willing to compromise at this time. Maybe if the RIAA and MPAA got a little less agressive and a little more giving then we'd give right back. Maybe. At least with the RIAA and the record labels we can (and are!) starting to take steps to render them obsolete. You'd think that makes compromise inevitable, wouldn't you?;)
As far as actual formats go, I don't think I'd mind a whole lot having music files that couldn't be played after a period of time. Nor would I mind if my copy couldn't be played by someone else. Not a whole lot at all, in fact. What I do mind is that all the DRM schemes so far proposed require closed source phone home software. For my own sanity and conscience I require software installed on my computer to come with the source code, or at least that it's readily available. And I also require no phone home software that might phone home with my privacy in its packets. And I also require that if software does phone home, I know what it does, what it sends, and so forth (hence one reason among many why I require the source code to any program I install on my machine). If they can make the format work and still meet these requirements, I'm giving and they'r
0) You are a 12th level Fighter being marched down a corridor, no armor, your arms bound behind your back, and four men with crossbows are guarding you. So you run for it. Why not? After all, you have almost 100 hit points, and a crossbow does something like 1d6+1 and is slow to reload besides. Sure, we don't want our game to be like the real world, but should there be no chance that they can kill you?
I'm not sure where the rule came from, but we used critical hits. A natural 20 on an attack was a critical hit and always did damage, no matter what your THAC0 was or your opponent's AC. A modified 30 was also used as a critical hit, depending on other factors, but it was DM discretion.
1) A typical town person has 1 hit point. 1 hit point is the smallest amount of damage you can do. Any blow with a sword will kill a town person. Okay. But also, say, a house cat: three attacks, claw/claw/bite, any one can kill a town person.
Actually, that's a rule you should ignore, and if you don't it's your own damn fault. It's plain stupid. The DM I used to play under had a generic stat sheet he used for townspeople, making appropriate modifications as needed. Hell, it says right out that you can use as many or as few rules as you like, just make sure everyone agrees on the set you're going to use so there won't be any stupid arguing, and always understand that the DM can trump any rule at any time and/or invoke any rule at any time, without explanation. You have to trust him, so if your DM sucks, get a new one.
2) A 1st level mage is incredibly easy to kill, and only has one spell per day, and that one spell might even be something lame like Burning Hands. A 20th level mage, on the other hand, has so much firepower as to render the rest of the party irrelevant. This is overall considered to be balanced?
I agree that early level mages are too weak, but I disagree that later level mages are too strong. I played a Druid once up to about level 9, and when his special abilities kicked in, boy was he untouchable. (Then I learned that my DM was making special allowances for the character because he actually genuinely liked the guy and decided to see how far it would go. He survived a number of things he shouldn't have.;) ) Then the DM really ramped up the campaign and had to work particularly hard to keep it balanced so that every character was needed. As soon as we developed a dependency on the Druid, he introduced obstacles and creatures and stuff that the Druid couldn't counter, but the fighter could, or whatever. The short of it is that your 20th level mage shouldn't be in a campaign that even allows the comparison to your 1st level mage, he should still be on the edge of death in every combat, and if the rules fail to provide this, well, it does say right out to use as many or as few rules as necessary to have a great game.
1. First of all, there are a couple things about the D&D ruleset that trouble me - example: last time I played, there was nothing about size of an enemy effecting chance to hit. Throwing a knife at an enemy 12 feet side should be notably more likely to hit than an enemy 4 inches wide. Unfortunately, its not... according to D&D rules.
Aha, I see, we have a perfectly lacking understanding of AC. It's like this. AC doesn't mean the probability you will hit someone. It's the probability your hit will do damage. So your guy who's 12 feet wide with a really low armor class is probably stone-skinned, so you can hit him all day long, but your hits don't do any damage. Mass misinterpretation of the intentionally vague concepts of Armor Class have brought us to the point where people think it's "hit or miss". Nope. It's "hurt or not". The DM I used to play with would translate the dice for us if we were too unimaginative to do so ourselves, but it didn't take long for a newbie to get the hang of it once you see it really working.
"What AC did you hit?"
"Crap, -1. Did I hurt him?"
"Nope, your sword bounced off his leathery knee, but at least you touched him this time."
Next round.
"What AC did you hit?"
"-1 again. Did I hurt him?"
"Nope, the dragon moved his wing right when you swung, so it was a clean miss."
2.In D&D, a DungeonMaster had at least a little room to embellish. A newbie who isn't a jerk and isn't incredibly stupid probably won't be instantly killed if a good DM is hosting the game. Their gameplay will lead them further in to the game, teaching them and immersing them in the action, like how a teacher of Go will open a students eyes through a game on the board. Computers aren't there yet, even Neverwinter Nights, which was supposed to send pen&paper to obscelence, somehow missed.
Computers *can* do it now, they just haven't. I think the main problem is that the Ultima line didn't progress much more. Ultima IV and V were strongly moving towards real role-playing, and I figure we should have it now, but sadly the game companies don't seem to have continued in that direction, including Origin.:( If I only had the time....
It's pretty split among the musicians and scientists I know. They're all conservative in weird ways. In any case, my opinion based on the aggregate that I see in the news, anyway, is that musicians are at the bottom of the list and scientists are next. Engineers are the earliest adopters of anything they engineer, and nothing that is competitive to them, seems like.;) Hell, even among computer programmers I know there's some interesting contradictions. The guy down the street loves trees and hates ecologically-unfriendly technology but refuses to drive anything but '70s-era suburbans because he's afraid of getting crushed in a car accident.
I might put record label executives below musicians, but to do that I'd have to admit they were people, and I'm not going to do that.;)
As I said, I have been facing the issues of porting RPG rules to computers since 1979. My first RPG was published by a major publisher in 1982.
Allright, in that case, who the hell are you? I can only think of one CRPG that came out in the real early 80s, and that's Ultima. I don't recall the exact year, though, and it may have been earlier. So when you say your first RPG was published by a major publisher in 1982, are you talking a software RPG or one of those other kind? Which one? I seem to recall the gaming field in 1982 being very small, so it seems like a few more hints and I could probably just figure it out.;)
I did try and get into second edition, with long complicated grand adventures once. My players must have disagreed; The dwarf got drunk and fell out the window, the power-gamer fighter threw a tantrum and went off to kill kobolds, and the brilliant charismatic wizard with a novel length back-story got himself stabbed by a goblin. By that time the pizza had arrived...
Man, I could've written this post. Your powergamer fighter didn't happened to be named Earl, by any chance? I actually found 2nd edition to be a huge improvement. I didn't like 1st edition and kept going back to basic, but 2nd edition ruled. It was simple, but it wasn't. It was so easy to just drop rules here and there that made the game more complex than it needed to be.
Of course, I did stop playing AD&D and started chasing girls at a definite period of my life... (but not before getting stoned and playing Toon, you should try it sometime)
I always enjoyed Rolemaster, but I always thought it was a game that would be better spent as a computer program to assist gamers. The #1 problem I have with RPG's (and the reason I quit playing them) was that too much time was spent in rules, but in the simpler system, too much time was spent arguing over interpretation of the rules. So I wanted something with the resolution of Rolemaster but used some neat little automated method to deal with the rules.
Of course, these days I don't have time for that stuff anymore.:( Hopefully RPG's will still be fun when my kids get old enough, then I'll try to get them interested just so I can play them again.;)
Heh, you guys are all missing the point. It's years since I played, but there are a few traits that tend to be missing from the "powergame". Without going into detail on those, I'll just say that I don't enjoy a game missing those traits. But there's also frequently a few traits missing from the hard-core role-playing game, and I don't like that either. It can be very difficult to find a group with the right mix of powergamers and roleplayers, but rest assured, they both belong in the game, in the same game, at the same table, and so forth. Who's going to go off running into the dungeon to save the princess? The powergamer, or the poor beat-up thief that fell in love with her? When he gets there, who's going to kill all the monsters in the way? Right. Both belong at the table, as far as I'm concerned, and I'd prefer to have a good balance between the two.
What?! Ultima IV allowed you 8 party members including yourself, one for each virtue, and there were only (gasp!) 8 possible characters to pick up for your party. Better yet, they were one for each class, and the character for *your* class always made some excuse for not joining you. Heh. Balanced party indeed. Ultima V definitely improved the idea, though.
Nice thing about Ultima IV in this thread, though, was that while there wasn't a way to descend into darkness and still 'win the game' (i.e. no victory conditions available unless you chose the path of the avatar), the decisions (when they were there) were very much grey area decisions.
Actually, I recently saw a series of benchmarks that showed Java right up there with C++ for floating point ops and integer ops, using Sun's VM. I don't recall where I saw it, but I was googling for a java/python comparison, actually. Java appears slow on the GUI because GUI stuff doesn't byte compile quite as well as the other stuff. For pure computational stuff the JVM can assemble the bytecode almost 1:1 into native code, but for GUI stuff it has a *lot* more work to do to get it.
I think this is a great idea! What is needed is some not-for-profit organization to oversee the open source project and ensure that all data that goes on the network is digitally signed and encrypted, to protect the generous souls hosting nodes as much as anything else. Who would be willing to take a crack at this? It's way out of my league right now, maybe in a few years, though...
Um, you are aware that VMWare == Virtual Machine Ware? It's just a software BIOS that runs as an application, so the OS running in a VMWare session thinks it's running at the level of the hardware, but it's not. The layers are: BIOS, Kernel, Application, VMWare (as an Application). Then, VMWare is a BIOS, Kernel, remaining Unix layers.
With CoLinux, instead, you have: BIOS, Kernel, Application, Linux, remaining Unix layers. Since you're skipping the BIOS step in the middle entirely, you're going to see a dramatic speed increase, guaranteed, and for the same reason an app compiled with Cygwin running Windows is faster than the same app in Linux in a VMWare session: less layers.
Heh. I'll take this on, I agree with it mostly, but there's a few things I wanted to bitch about, but not at you directly.
First, we need to decide if we want *every single* desktop, or if we'll just be happy with "enough". You know, "enough that we can run Linux without being oppressed by Windows zealots" and so forth. "Enough" that we can reasonably expect a document sent to us in email will be readable in our environment, and so forth. That's what I want, and when we have that I don't give a rat's ass how much of the market Windows has.
Cygwin seems to go mostly unscathed, but a lot of people bash WineX. Regular ol' wine catches some complaining, as does Crossover Office.
Near as I can tell, WineX and Crossover Office get bashed regularly as an extension of the Wine License Schism. I think wine catches flak just because of existing bad blood between various factions and is completely self-defeating. Wine is great, runs a lot of stuff, but doesn't run a lot of stuff well, at least in my experience. I think wine's best purpose is to allow applications to be recompiled for LInux that were written for windows. That's what I think, anyway.;)
Anything dealing with Microsoft servers (Exchange interoperability, for example) occasionally gets the same.
This stuff irritates me because there's a reason Exchange does many of the things it does. Bashing interoperability with Exchange ignores the basic fact that Exchange got those features and a fair bit of subsequent adoption because *NIX didn't have them. Or we did, but our implementation was kludgy and unwieldy. Interoperability with Exchange is now required if we want to get those servers back.
Ports of Linux software to Windows sometimes catch flak.
There's two sides to this that I can see right away. There's one side that says "If all of our great stuff runs in Windows, nobody will ever *need* to switch", and there's the side that says "If all of our great stuff runs in Windows it'll be very *easy* to switch". I can see both sides of this argument, although I'm generally in the second group. Cross-platform compatibility is a goal we really need, and in the absence of standards that work in a lot of areas (granted, we are also in the presence of standards that work in a lot of areas), then the only way we can get some of our own standard agendas and interoperability to work cross-platform is to port Linux stuff to Windows. If you ask me, and you haven't, I'd say it's immoral and unethical to write an end-user application that doesn't run on multiple platforms. Since when does the developer get to pick and choose what platform the end-user uses? Plenty of cross-platform development libraries and kits available, no excuses left.
In the case of WineX ports, they worry that game companies may feel that advising users to use WineX is "good enough".
This argument falls on its face in general. One of the top reasons I hear from family and friends for not switching to Linux is because of games. !? Right. Fucking games. Well, if all their favorite games (such as Everquest, for example) run fine in WineX, they can switch if they really want to. When enough people switch, the game developers will continue to do what they do best: make games that require lowest-level access to the hardware for best performance. And they'll look at their audience and they'll say....
Your line, George.
OH yeah. "Hey you, get your damn hands..."
Er, anyway. Then we'll get native LInux games that really fucking rock, because the audience will be there.
It's probably the fact that they're running on Windows and not Linux. Running them in colinux means they're still going to be running under windows, but now it'll be windows AND linux - I'd expect them to be slower than cygwin. But, I too am interested in finding out how it will actually turn out.
Actually, I'd expect them to run faster in CoLinux. In Cygwin apps are linked dynamically to the cygwin runtime dll which is just a POSIX layer that maps calls to the WinAPI. So every single app has to open the cygwin runtime dll and reach through it to the WinAPI. CoLinux, on the other hand, means the app runs natively and the linux kernel maps the POSIX stuff to Windows, so there's a few layers being removed entirely, while other layers are being combined into one central process rather than a dll.
I got RedHat to install fine on my Laptop(Dell Inspiron 5100)
Not surprised you had trouble with RedHat. They waited so long to switch to ALSA that sound has been a problem with them for awhile.
IN any case, why didn't you try Mandrake? I've put Mandrake on several flavors of Dell Inspirons, including the 5100 (iirc) and had it work flawlessly out of the box. I suggest you give it another shot with Mandrake. I've got Mandrake on an IBM Thinkpad right now and it works, well, flawlessly. (Except my wife burned up the power supply, so it's down until I get a new power supply)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I don't know about Debian, I've never gotten it successfully installed. I also haven't worked too hard at it. Mandrake is great. ;)
With the next release I'm planning on mirroring the package repository locally and doing my software installs and crap from there (after I clear some space off my hard drive. I thought that 120GB would mean I had some free space...). In any case...
Who are you distributing it to? Are you a computer store wanting to carry a boxed edition, or are you a sysadmin wanting to set it up for your company, or what? There's plenty of us who'd like to help you figure out what to use, but it would help if we knew what you were shooting for...
Not even the whole installer, since the very last dialog tells you about it. ;) Personally, I've quit listening when people say "I installed Redhat and ran it for a few days...". I tune them out and wait for them to spiral down, and then say "You didn't try it, so don't waste my time telling me how bad linux is until you really try it, and no, dual-booting is *not* trying it."
I'll give you another datapoint. ;)
8.0 - don't know, didn't use it.
Same
8.1 - solid (once the Invalid EIP init workaround for K7T266 chips was used)
Most games didn't start on my machine. Most applications, however, worked fine. I threw windows out over this one.
8.2 - flaky (on my system at least)
Solid, but some games (like Armagetron) still didn't work at all, segfaulting on startup. I couldn't even compile them from source and have them work. Solid if I didn't do anything "extra" to the box. Started running as a server with this one as well.
9.0 - OK
Solid, everything worked, and worked well even when building software from source. I think they stopped doing their special Mandrake stuff that made the distribution completely incompatible with other distributions. Many redhat rpms also installed flawlessly.
9.1 - solid. Excellent work
Solid until I installed Macromedia's flash plugin. Then X became very unstable and frequently crashed, Mozilla wouldn't let me type stuff into the address bar frequently, and reboot fixed it. :( Frustrating. I could've digged deeper, but the problem didn't manifest until a month or so before 9.2, so I just waited.
9.2 - flaky
Very solid, I'm very pleased with it, with two minor caveats. You'll find one of them on my website in the article about Windows vs Linux Installation. The other is that when installing an rpm, some of them break the applications menu, requiring me to load up menudrak to take care of it. There's an update for it, I just haven't downloaded it. I'm waiting for 10.0 Official to be available to non-club members (and hopefully this summer I'll finally have money to join the club). However, the system is extremely solid. I've done some things to hurt it, too, and it's doing fine. Still running as a server, but no longer a production server (moved my website to a hosted service).
I dont contribute to OSS because the idea of working for corporations (Mandrake, Redhat, etc) for free is stupid.
So give your money directly to the developers, eh? But that won't entitle you to download Mandrake 10 before it hits general availability. Your argument is pointless because fuckin' nobody says "I'll write some open source software so Mandrake, RedHat, IBM, et al, can wrap it up and sell it and I get nothing." If that's your only sticking point on contributing to open source software, I suggest you take another look at your value system, because it appears to be mising some things. Those of us that do contribute don't do it because we want to work for free, we do it for a variety of reasons, usually related to making good software.
But I suspect that it all boils down to one thing that Dave Mustaine said years ago. When asked why he played guitar, he said something to the effect of "Nobody plays guitar because they want to. I play because I have to." Programming is exactly the same. If I don't write at least 10 lines of code a month (not a lot, admittedly), I get real cranky, pissy, and generally unpleasant. Same happens if I don't play my guitar at least once a week (if I seem to be cranky right now, it's not for lack of coding, it's for lack of guitar).
anthropomorphized?!?!?!? That's not even a word. Have you ever heard of anything being morphized?
Hmmm, let's see. Anthro means human, as in anthropology = study of humans. So Anthropomorphized should mean "morph to human", right?
First place I ever encountered that word (and I had to look it up) was in The Satanic Bible. ;) Enjoy!
I read it that way too, and surprisingly, felt reassured about Java. Hrm.
I also had no choice but to agree with him that RMS's definition of Free violates some law of thermodynamics. :) I've always wanted proof that perpetual motion can exist, and now I have it. ;)
Apple not only has a more solid model of music ownership with itunes, they will have done it first. Luckily this project is going to show up late to the party when they unveil it two years from now.
Emphasis mine, of course.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I read the first article (well, the paper about MPEG and OSS) and couldn't help but think he was trying to say "let's work together, but we're not budging". And that's not helping the problem anyway. Compromise, right? Both sides have to give.
When I read the interview, I couldn't help but think he was right in a lot of ways, such as when he talks about how the experience isn't any different now than it was before digital music (at least, before digital music like we know it now). Sure we can rip our CDs and carry them around on a series of nice-looking and nice-working mp3 players (I have one of my own, but it's CD-based :( ). Great. But the experience hasn't changed. Not until I buy that $400 device from those River people, anyway. But I also couldn't help but think "too little too late". If they had worried about the DRM stuff 10 years ago, all the problems we're having now would have been averted.
See, it looks to me like he's honestly trying to keep fair use rights, even if he's not formally saying "fair use". He wants the digital experience to be realized by everyone, and he knows that content producers (or in the case of record labels, content distributors, blech) have to come on board for it to really work. It's pretty obvious (and I think this guy knows it, based on the interview) that people want the "digital experience" for which he's trying to create a standard and therefore an opportunity, and people are trying to make it happen on their own, and even having limited success (I must admit that my own music collection is more portable than it has ever been and more accessible in the process, and I've done the same with my movie collection).
The problem is that it's too little too late. He mentioned the stalemate he's trying to resolve, but I don't see it resolving his way. For one thing, I'm not jumping on his bandwagon without at least some solid clarification, and if he and the content producers/distributors want to get my money, they must give their part of the compromise, whatever that may be. I'll give my part, I'm offering it! But I want something in return, and if there's anything I've learned about the content producers/distributors, they need to give first. 'Cause if they don't, then I'll give and give and give, and they'll take and take and take, and before you know it I've given them everything for nothing in return.
Compromise or obsolescence will resolve this stalemate, and neither side seems to be willing to compromise at this time. Maybe if the RIAA and MPAA got a little less agressive and a little more giving then we'd give right back. Maybe. At least with the RIAA and the record labels we can (and are!) starting to take steps to render them obsolete. You'd think that makes compromise inevitable, wouldn't you? ;)
As far as actual formats go, I don't think I'd mind a whole lot having music files that couldn't be played after a period of time. Nor would I mind if my copy couldn't be played by someone else. Not a whole lot at all, in fact. What I do mind is that all the DRM schemes so far proposed require closed source phone home software. For my own sanity and conscience I require software installed on my computer to come with the source code, or at least that it's readily available. And I also require no phone home software that might phone home with my privacy in its packets. And I also require that if software does phone home, I know what it does, what it sends, and so forth (hence one reason among many why I require the source code to any program I install on my machine). If they can make the format work and still meet these requirements, I'm giving and they'r
0) You are a 12th level Fighter being marched down a corridor, no armor, your arms bound behind your back, and four men with crossbows are guarding you. So you run for it. Why not? After all, you have almost 100 hit points, and a crossbow does something like 1d6+1 and is slow to reload besides. Sure, we don't want our game to be like the real world, but should there be no chance that they can kill you?
I'm not sure where the rule came from, but we used critical hits. A natural 20 on an attack was a critical hit and always did damage, no matter what your THAC0 was or your opponent's AC. A modified 30 was also used as a critical hit, depending on other factors, but it was DM discretion.
1) A typical town person has 1 hit point. 1 hit point is the smallest amount of damage you can do. Any blow with a sword will kill a town person. Okay. But also, say, a house cat: three attacks, claw/claw/bite, any one can kill a town person.
Actually, that's a rule you should ignore, and if you don't it's your own damn fault. It's plain stupid. The DM I used to play under had a generic stat sheet he used for townspeople, making appropriate modifications as needed. Hell, it says right out that you can use as many or as few rules as you like, just make sure everyone agrees on the set you're going to use so there won't be any stupid arguing, and always understand that the DM can trump any rule at any time and/or invoke any rule at any time, without explanation. You have to trust him, so if your DM sucks, get a new one.
2) A 1st level mage is incredibly easy to kill, and only has one spell per day, and that one spell might even be something lame like Burning Hands. A 20th level mage, on the other hand, has so much firepower as to render the rest of the party irrelevant. This is overall considered to be balanced?
I agree that early level mages are too weak, but I disagree that later level mages are too strong. I played a Druid once up to about level 9, and when his special abilities kicked in, boy was he untouchable. (Then I learned that my DM was making special allowances for the character because he actually genuinely liked the guy and decided to see how far it would go. He survived a number of things he shouldn't have. ;) ) Then the DM really ramped up the campaign and had to work particularly hard to keep it balanced so that every character was needed. As soon as we developed a dependency on the Druid, he introduced obstacles and creatures and stuff that the Druid couldn't counter, but the fighter could, or whatever. The short of it is that your 20th level mage shouldn't be in a campaign that even allows the comparison to your 1st level mage, he should still be on the edge of death in every combat, and if the rules fail to provide this, well, it does say right out to use as many or as few rules as necessary to have a great game.
1. First of all, there are a couple things about the D&D ruleset that trouble me - example: last time I played, there was nothing about size of an enemy effecting chance to hit. Throwing a knife at an enemy 12 feet side should be notably more likely to hit than an enemy 4 inches wide. Unfortunately, its not... according to D&D rules.
Aha, I see, we have a perfectly lacking understanding of AC. It's like this. AC doesn't mean the probability you will hit someone. It's the probability your hit will do damage. So your guy who's 12 feet wide with a really low armor class is probably stone-skinned, so you can hit him all day long, but your hits don't do any damage. Mass misinterpretation of the intentionally vague concepts of Armor Class have brought us to the point where people think it's "hit or miss". Nope. It's "hurt or not". The DM I used to play with would translate the dice for us if we were too unimaginative to do so ourselves, but it didn't take long for a newbie to get the hang of it once you see it really working.
"What AC did you hit?"
"Crap, -1. Did I hurt him?"
"Nope, your sword bounced off his leathery knee, but at least you touched him this time."
Next round.
"What AC did you hit?"
"-1 again. Did I hurt him?"
"Nope, the dragon moved his wing right when you swung, so it was a clean miss."
2.In D&D, a DungeonMaster had at least a little room to embellish. A newbie who isn't a jerk and isn't incredibly stupid probably won't be instantly killed if a good DM is hosting the game. Their gameplay will lead them further in to the game, teaching them and immersing them in the action, like how a teacher of Go will open a students eyes through a game on the board. Computers aren't there yet, even Neverwinter Nights, which was supposed to send pen&paper to obscelence, somehow missed.
Computers *can* do it now, they just haven't. I think the main problem is that the Ultima line didn't progress much more. Ultima IV and V were strongly moving towards real role-playing, and I figure we should have it now, but sadly the game companies don't seem to have continued in that direction, including Origin. :( If I only had the time....
It's pretty split among the musicians and scientists I know. They're all conservative in weird ways. In any case, my opinion based on the aggregate that I see in the news, anyway, is that musicians are at the bottom of the list and scientists are next. Engineers are the earliest adopters of anything they engineer, and nothing that is competitive to them, seems like. ;) Hell, even among computer programmers I know there's some interesting contradictions. The guy down the street loves trees and hates ecologically-unfriendly technology but refuses to drive anything but '70s-era suburbans because he's afraid of getting crushed in a car accident.
I might put record label executives below musicians, but to do that I'd have to admit they were people, and I'm not going to do that. ;)
As I said, I have been facing the issues of porting RPG rules to computers since 1979. My first RPG was published by a major publisher in 1982.
Allright, in that case, who the hell are you? I can only think of one CRPG that came out in the real early 80s, and that's Ultima. I don't recall the exact year, though, and it may have been earlier. So when you say your first RPG was published by a major publisher in 1982, are you talking a software RPG or one of those other kind? Which one? I seem to recall the gaming field in 1982 being very small, so it seems like a few more hints and I could probably just figure it out. ;)
I did try and get into second edition, with long complicated grand adventures once. My players must have disagreed; The dwarf got drunk and fell out the window, the power-gamer fighter threw a tantrum and went off to kill kobolds, and the brilliant charismatic wizard with a novel length back-story got himself stabbed by a goblin. By that time the pizza had arrived...
Man, I could've written this post. Your powergamer fighter didn't happened to be named Earl, by any chance? I actually found 2nd edition to be a huge improvement. I didn't like 1st edition and kept going back to basic, but 2nd edition ruled. It was simple, but it wasn't. It was so easy to just drop rules here and there that made the game more complex than it needed to be.
I've got three kids....
Of course, I did stop playing AD&D and started chasing girls at a definite period of my life... (but not before getting stoned and playing Toon, you should try it sometime)
I always enjoyed Rolemaster, but I always thought it was a game that would be better spent as a computer program to assist gamers. The #1 problem I have with RPG's (and the reason I quit playing them) was that too much time was spent in rules, but in the simpler system, too much time was spent arguing over interpretation of the rules. So I wanted something with the resolution of Rolemaster but used some neat little automated method to deal with the rules.
Of course, these days I don't have time for that stuff anymore. :( Hopefully RPG's will still be fun when my kids get old enough, then I'll try to get them interested just so I can play them again. ;)
Heh, you guys are all missing the point. It's years since I played, but there are a few traits that tend to be missing from the "powergame". Without going into detail on those, I'll just say that I don't enjoy a game missing those traits. But there's also frequently a few traits missing from the hard-core role-playing game, and I don't like that either. It can be very difficult to find a group with the right mix of powergamers and roleplayers, but rest assured, they both belong in the game, in the same game, at the same table, and so forth. Who's going to go off running into the dungeon to save the princess? The powergamer, or the poor beat-up thief that fell in love with her? When he gets there, who's going to kill all the monsters in the way? Right. Both belong at the table, as far as I'm concerned, and I'd prefer to have a good balance between the two.
Ultima IV balanced party
What?! Ultima IV allowed you 8 party members including yourself, one for each virtue, and there were only (gasp!) 8 possible characters to pick up for your party. Better yet, they were one for each class, and the character for *your* class always made some excuse for not joining you. Heh. Balanced party indeed. Ultima V definitely improved the idea, though.
Nice thing about Ultima IV in this thread, though, was that while there wasn't a way to descend into darkness and still 'win the game' (i.e. no victory conditions available unless you chose the path of the avatar), the decisions (when they were there) were very much grey area decisions.
Actually, I recently saw a series of benchmarks that showed Java right up there with C++ for floating point ops and integer ops, using Sun's VM. I don't recall where I saw it, but I was googling for a java/python comparison, actually. Java appears slow on the GUI because GUI stuff doesn't byte compile quite as well as the other stuff. For pure computational stuff the JVM can assemble the bytecode almost 1:1 into native code, but for GUI stuff it has a *lot* more work to do to get it.
I think this is a great idea! What is needed is some not-for-profit organization to oversee the open source project and ensure that all data that goes on the network is digitally signed and encrypted, to protect the generous souls hosting nodes as much as anything else. Who would be willing to take a crack at this? It's way out of my league right now, maybe in a few years, though...
Or FORTRAN. FORTRAN is more traditionally used in scientific computing anyways.
That's because the only reason scientists aren't the biggest Luddites in the world is because there are still musicians in the world. *sigh*
Um, you are aware that VMWare == Virtual Machine Ware? It's just a software BIOS that runs as an application, so the OS running in a VMWare session thinks it's running at the level of the hardware, but it's not. The layers are: BIOS, Kernel, Application, VMWare (as an Application). Then, VMWare is a BIOS, Kernel, remaining Unix layers.
With CoLinux, instead, you have: BIOS, Kernel, Application, Linux, remaining Unix layers. Since you're skipping the BIOS step in the middle entirely, you're going to see a dramatic speed increase, guaranteed, and for the same reason an app compiled with Cygwin running Windows is faster than the same app in Linux in a VMWare session: less layers.
Enough! I get the idea. But what if you're wrong?
Heh. I'll take this on, I agree with it mostly, but there's a few things I wanted to bitch about, but not at you directly.
First, we need to decide if we want *every single* desktop, or if we'll just be happy with "enough". You know, "enough that we can run Linux without being oppressed by Windows zealots" and so forth. "Enough" that we can reasonably expect a document sent to us in email will be readable in our environment, and so forth. That's what I want, and when we have that I don't give a rat's ass how much of the market Windows has.
Cygwin seems to go mostly unscathed, but a lot of people bash WineX. Regular ol' wine catches some complaining, as does Crossover Office.
Near as I can tell, WineX and Crossover Office get bashed regularly as an extension of the Wine License Schism. I think wine catches flak just because of existing bad blood between various factions and is completely self-defeating. Wine is great, runs a lot of stuff, but doesn't run a lot of stuff well, at least in my experience. I think wine's best purpose is to allow applications to be recompiled for LInux that were written for windows. That's what I think, anyway. ;)
Anything dealing with Microsoft servers (Exchange interoperability, for example) occasionally gets the same.
This stuff irritates me because there's a reason Exchange does many of the things it does. Bashing interoperability with Exchange ignores the basic fact that Exchange got those features and a fair bit of subsequent adoption because *NIX didn't have them. Or we did, but our implementation was kludgy and unwieldy. Interoperability with Exchange is now required if we want to get those servers back.
Ports of Linux software to Windows sometimes catch flak.
There's two sides to this that I can see right away. There's one side that says "If all of our great stuff runs in Windows, nobody will ever *need* to switch", and there's the side that says "If all of our great stuff runs in Windows it'll be very *easy* to switch". I can see both sides of this argument, although I'm generally in the second group. Cross-platform compatibility is a goal we really need, and in the absence of standards that work in a lot of areas (granted, we are also in the presence of standards that work in a lot of areas), then the only way we can get some of our own standard agendas and interoperability to work cross-platform is to port Linux stuff to Windows. If you ask me, and you haven't, I'd say it's immoral and unethical to write an end-user application that doesn't run on multiple platforms. Since when does the developer get to pick and choose what platform the end-user uses? Plenty of cross-platform development libraries and kits available, no excuses left.
In the case of WineX ports, they worry that game companies may feel that advising users to use WineX is "good enough".
This argument falls on its face in general. One of the top reasons I hear from family and friends for not switching to Linux is because of games. !? Right. Fucking games. Well, if all their favorite games (such as Everquest, for example) run fine in WineX, they can switch if they really want to. When enough people switch, the game developers will continue to do what they do best: make games that require lowest-level access to the hardware for best performance. And they'll look at their audience and they'll say....
Your line, George.
OH yeah. "Hey you, get your damn hands..."
Er, anyway. Then we'll get native LInux games that really fucking rock, because the audience will be there.
It's probably the fact that they're running on Windows and not Linux. Running them in colinux means they're still going to be running under windows, but now it'll be windows AND linux - I'd expect them to be slower than cygwin. But, I too am interested in finding out how it will actually turn out.
Actually, I'd expect them to run faster in CoLinux. In Cygwin apps are linked dynamically to the cygwin runtime dll which is just a POSIX layer that maps calls to the WinAPI. So every single app has to open the cygwin runtime dll and reach through it to the WinAPI. CoLinux, on the other hand, means the app runs natively and the linux kernel maps the POSIX stuff to Windows, so there's a few layers being removed entirely, while other layers are being combined into one central process rather than a dll.
I got RedHat to install fine on my Laptop(Dell Inspiron 5100)
Not surprised you had trouble with RedHat. They waited so long to switch to ALSA that sound has been a problem with them for awhile.
IN any case, why didn't you try Mandrake? I've put Mandrake on several flavors of Dell Inspirons, including the 5100 (iirc) and had it work flawlessly out of the box. I suggest you give it another shot with Mandrake. I've got Mandrake on an IBM Thinkpad right now and it works, well, flawlessly. (Except my wife burned up the power supply, so it's down until I get a new power supply)
I see CoLinux doing the same thing for Linux that Windows 3.1 did for Windows.
Um, take advantage of a newly-opened hole in the desktop market and leverage an existing corporate install base to do so? Did I miss something?