If it's checking to see if you have genuine windows, and it bails out because you're running WINE under Linux, then it is doing it's job correctly.
Wouldn't we be complaining if it *wasn't* working right?
Using free software and using pirated Windows are two completely different things. It is copyright infringement to pirate Windows. It is not copyright infringement to reverse engineer the Windows API to allow other operating systems to run Windows programs.
I wish it was that simple. All we can do really is petition ATI for better drivers. Otherwise the situation will never improve and switching will require a level of seriousness.
We're oversimplifying the matter through debate. The switching process usually invovles some sort of dual booting process which allows the newbie to gradually wean himself from Windows as he discovers Linux alternatives to programs he uses in Windows. The final step in this case would be eventually buying a compatible video card so he can game from Linux.
I only know one person who's switched from Windows to Linux cold turkey, but he already had an NVIDIA card.:)
That easily constitutes someone who is not serious about switching. Someone who is serious about switching would buy the compatible video card rather than settle for Windows.
X.org has real transparency right now. The problem is GNOME and KDE haven't integrated it into their programs yet. To get a real transparent terminal, you have to make the WHOLE window transparent with transset. Desktop envs need to start taking advantage of this stuff asap.
What exactly constitutes "seriously wants to switch"? Why should a newbie commit to Linux before his old video card can even work?
The cost of replacing the video card with one that is supported is marginal. If the newbie still didn't want to, he could always use Linux anyway with no (or poor) 3d support. If he can't handle buying a supported card or living without 3d, then he can petition ATI for better drivers.
People who claim ATI is the single reason they're not using Linux are just using it as an excuse. If they were serious about switching, they'd just get an NVIDIA card, a supported ATI card (they do exist), or live without 3d. The choice is pretty clear cut. Linux supports some hardware and it doesn't support others. That's a fact of life in any OS be it Windows, *nix, or Mac.
>> I wonder when Linux users will stop buying hardware that doesn't have published interfaces.>>
I wonder when some Linux users will stop being so arrogant. Many people come to Linux AFTER they have purchased an ATI card with a desktop or notebook.
"Switch to Linux it's better." "Okay. Reformat hard drive, install, configure. Hey, i can't get my ATI card to work." "You are so stupid. Why didn't you buy a card that works with Linux?"
I can accept the fact that a newbie didn't know ATI driver support for Linux is absolute shit, but anyone who seriously wants to switch, should not bitch about it after the fact. They should just cut their losses and buy an NVIDIA card. Use the ATI card on a second box for a Wintendo or something.
ATI's bad driver support does not negate the fact that Linux is better. And the arrogance you speak of is anger at ATI, not the clueless newbie.
You can compile X.org in Debian just fine. I've done it. Not that it really matters. The hardware accelerated features that X.org is developing are still too new and unstable to be usable at any reasonable level. I'm really not going to care one way or another if Debian gets X.org until GNOME and KDE start doing useful things with cario, glitz, damage, and whatnot. Granted, work on this has indeed started, but until it is usable at at least a beta level, Debian need not waste their time rushing to adopt the X fork. They will. Give them time. The rush work that needs to be done is not at the distro level but at the development level. I want to see GNOME and KDE using nifty hardware accelerated effects. Real transparency built into the terminal and an Expose clone. Then distros can start worrying about packaging X.org.
The mod who modded parent informative must be uninformed, on crack, or have an odd sense of humor, as XFree is neither BSD, nor has Netcraft confirmed its death...
I am not a business. Thus my cheap rate. By charging such a cheap price, I get repeat customers, free meals, and returned favors. It's the balance between bartering and charging high.
Diffusion of responsibility is a powerful sociological concept, but I don't think it applies here. There are a lot of very pissed off fans right now; their show has been squashed during its best season. Enterprise has never been this good, arguably much of Star Trek has never been this good. We're seeing the precursor to the birth of the Federation and the precursor to the Romulan wars. It's like having your obnoxious room mate barge in right when you were about a bust a nut on your girlfriend. Wrecks the fun.
I am a regular seeder of Enterprise and according to the worldwide statistics I've seen, Enterprise distribtues no more than tens of thousands of episodes each week out of the millions of fans who watch it on regular TV.
That is a tiny, tiny percentage of the total viewership, and let's not forget that not every TV viewer has a Nielsen box and are thus not counted in the ratings that UPN holds oh so holy. And let's also not forget that a very large percentage of the Bit Torrent users are people who wouldn't be watching the show anyway because it isn't broadcasted in their country.
Really, Bit Torrent is having a negligbile effect on Enterprise's ratings.
Excellent advice. I usually do free tech support for family and close friends, but if I'm dealing with people I don't know well, I switch into "business" mode and charge approximately $20 an hour. Usually, if it's something like spyware/viruses, I can get their machine cleaned up in just an hour, so its worth their money and my time.
That's a really... interesting... interpretation of the Sherman act. I'd find it real amusing to see you try and cite the precedent for it.
AT&T was struck down under antitrust and was forced to license and fully disclose a number of technologies unrelated to their direct line of business, including the UNIX operating system. Microsoft similarly should not be allowed to corner the market on every aspect of operating system development, and should be forced to license and fully disclose critical technologies that have been created for the sole purpose of employing anti competitive tactics over the years.
Call it a funny interpretation all you want. Antitrust was designed to keep stuff like Microsoft from happening. The simple fact of the matter is a healthy capitalist nation doesn't have companies like Microsoft fucking up the game. They need to be stopped, just like Standard Oil and AT&T were.
Windows is here, now, today, and the vast majority of everyone is used to it and has accepted it. In order to convince the masses to inconvenience themselves with learning something new and using something different, the new product has to be superior in every way; not just adequate. Right now, Linux is adequate. It's a fine OS, with many advantages over Windows, and even Mac. But it is not superior in *every* way yet. It has weak spots.
It's unfortunate that the masses take such a short sighted, even bigoted view and won't switch on principle the way many of us do.
First off, DX being superior to opengl is debatable.
Second, even if I agreed with you that it is a superior API for its technical merits, it is a closed standard. Until Microsoft opens up DX, I will refuse to use it on principle, as should every other developer.
Grandparent is right. DX is a plague. Just another way MS maintains their monopoly. By the terms of the Sherman Antitrust Act, MS should be forced to open the standard or stop using it. A shame that the monopoly ruling against Microsoft resulted in no real progress.
But all those good episodes are bunched up in season 4. Smart TV networks don't cancel shows right when their story quality increases tenfold. Thus we have to conclude that UPN are a bunch of fucking morons.
Fuck that. It's a great show with a dedicated fanbase working with an unparalleled legacy. I'm so motherfucking tired of reading Enterprise articles on Slashdot and seeing nothing but "OMFG THE SHOW SUCKS" getting modded +5 insightful. Want to see moderator bias in its full form? Read Enterprise articles on Slashdot. Or a Star Wars article.
Enterprise is certainly above Voyager's quality, and with season 4, I think it's approaching DS9 quality as well. I'll be the first to admit the show wasn't perfect, but not every series can be DS9. Give the bashing and especially the mod bias a fucking rest. You guys make the comments in these articles unreadable at any threshold.
Imagine a D pad diagram at the top of the screen, taking up a small amount of space.
\|/ --- /|\
One of those arrows would be highlighted, indicating which direction is selected. To go in that direction, press and hold the center button. To change your direction, simply rotate the scroll wheel.
Then the back and play buttons are the A and B respectively. The most comfortable way to play would be to hold the iPod with your left hand. Place your left thumb on play and your left index finger on back. Place your right index finger on the middle button, and use the scroll wheel with your right thumb.
Of course it's nowhere near as nice as a real gameboy, but it would DEFINITELY be playable on some games. Especially games that don't require all the controls at once.
Get the program EasyTag for Linux, or run it in Mac with dports or fink. If all your songs conform to a filename standard, you can use EasyTag to automatically id3 tag your whole collection.
It works the reverse too. You can have it automatically rename files based on id3 tags. And unlike iTunes method of doing this, you can actually pick the folder/filename layout instead of their crappy unchangeable default. It's a sweet app.
Rather you should be advocating the use of the best tool for the job. If that tool happens to be from MS, then so be it. MS isn't the answer to everything, but then neither is Linux.
It's more than that. There is sufficient argument that Windows is the best tool for the job in ANY computer related task by nature of the monopoly. People should not buy Windows and instead use FOSS (or Mac) on mere principle. Many of us here on slashdot understand this, and do it, but we're constantly complaining that getting the masses to switch is a chicken and the egg problem. It's really not. Convince as many people as you can to switch on principle. That makes chickens. The more people you convert for moral reasons, the more eggs you hatch.
Besides, there are oogles of people out there who could do all their daily tasks on unix systems without a problem, in some cases better, and they just don't know it yet.
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I wish it was that simple. All we can do really is petition ATI for better drivers. Otherwise the situation will never improve and switching will require a level of seriousness.
We're oversimplifying the matter through debate. The switching process usually invovles some sort of dual booting process which allows the newbie to gradually wean himself from Windows as he discovers Linux alternatives to programs he uses in Windows. The final step in this case would be eventually buying a compatible video card so he can game from Linux.
:)
I only know one person who's switched from Windows to Linux cold turkey, but he already had an NVIDIA card.
That easily constitutes someone who is not serious about switching. Someone who is serious about switching would buy the compatible video card rather than settle for Windows.
X.org has real transparency right now. The problem is GNOME and KDE haven't integrated it into their programs yet. To get a real transparent terminal, you have to make the WHOLE window transparent with transset. Desktop envs need to start taking advantage of this stuff asap.
People who claim ATI is the single reason they're not using Linux are just using it as an excuse. If they were serious about switching, they'd just get an NVIDIA card, a supported ATI card (they do exist), or live without 3d. The choice is pretty clear cut. Linux supports some hardware and it doesn't support others. That's a fact of life in any OS be it Windows, *nix, or Mac.
ATI's bad driver support does not negate the fact that Linux is better. And the arrogance you speak of is anger at ATI, not the clueless newbie.
You can compile X.org in Debian just fine. I've done it. Not that it really matters. The hardware accelerated features that X.org is developing are still too new and unstable to be usable at any reasonable level. I'm really not going to care one way or another if Debian gets X.org until GNOME and KDE start doing useful things with cario, glitz, damage, and whatnot. Granted, work on this has indeed started, but until it is usable at at least a beta level, Debian need not waste their time rushing to adopt the X fork. They will. Give them time. The rush work that needs to be done is not at the distro level but at the development level. I want to see GNOME and KDE using nifty hardware accelerated effects. Real transparency built into the terminal and an Expose clone. Then distros can start worrying about packaging X.org.
The mod who modded parent informative must be uninformed, on crack, or have an odd sense of humor, as XFree is neither BSD, nor has Netcraft confirmed its death...
Nope. You can't mod anybody anything in this article now that you've posted to it!
I am not a business. Thus my cheap rate. By charging such a cheap price, I get repeat customers, free meals, and returned favors. It's the balance between bartering and charging high.
Diffusion of responsibility is a powerful sociological concept, but I don't think it applies here. There are a lot of very pissed off fans right now; their show has been squashed during its best season. Enterprise has never been this good, arguably much of Star Trek has never been this good. We're seeing the precursor to the birth of the Federation and the precursor to the Romulan wars. It's like having your obnoxious room mate barge in right when you were about a bust a nut on your girlfriend. Wrecks the fun.
I am a regular seeder of Enterprise and according to the worldwide statistics I've seen, Enterprise distribtues no more than tens of thousands of episodes each week out of the millions of fans who watch it on regular TV.
That is a tiny, tiny percentage of the total viewership, and let's not forget that not every TV viewer has a Nielsen box and are thus not counted in the ratings that UPN holds oh so holy. And let's also not forget that a very large percentage of the Bit Torrent users are people who wouldn't be watching the show anyway because it isn't broadcasted in their country.
Really, Bit Torrent is having a negligbile effect on Enterprise's ratings.
Excellent advice. I usually do free tech support for family and close friends, but if I'm dealing with people I don't know well, I switch into "business" mode and charge approximately $20 an hour. Usually, if it's something like spyware/viruses, I can get their machine cleaned up in just an hour, so its worth their money and my time.
Call it a funny interpretation all you want. Antitrust was designed to keep stuff like Microsoft from happening. The simple fact of the matter is a healthy capitalist nation doesn't have companies like Microsoft fucking up the game. They need to be stopped, just like Standard Oil and AT&T were.
You misunderstand the psychology of the market.
Windows is here, now, today, and the vast majority of everyone is used to it and has accepted it. In order to convince the masses to inconvenience themselves with learning something new and using something different, the new product has to be superior in every way; not just adequate. Right now, Linux is adequate. It's a fine OS, with many advantages over Windows, and even Mac. But it is not superior in *every* way yet. It has weak spots.
It's unfortunate that the masses take such a short sighted, even bigoted view and won't switch on principle the way many of us do.
First off, DX being superior to opengl is debatable.
Second, even if I agreed with you that it is a superior API for its technical merits, it is a closed standard. Until Microsoft opens up DX, I will refuse to use it on principle, as should every other developer.
Grandparent is right. DX is a plague. Just another way MS maintains their monopoly. By the terms of the Sherman Antitrust Act, MS should be forced to open the standard or stop using it. A shame that the monopoly ruling against Microsoft resulted in no real progress.
But all those good episodes are bunched up in season 4. Smart TV networks don't cancel shows right when their story quality increases tenfold. Thus we have to conclude that UPN are a bunch of fucking morons.
Fuck that. It's a great show with a dedicated fanbase working with an unparalleled legacy. I'm so motherfucking tired of reading Enterprise articles on Slashdot and seeing nothing but "OMFG THE SHOW SUCKS" getting modded +5 insightful. Want to see moderator bias in its full form? Read Enterprise articles on Slashdot. Or a Star Wars article.
Enterprise is certainly above Voyager's quality, and with season 4, I think it's approaching DS9 quality as well. I'll be the first to admit the show wasn't perfect, but not every series can be DS9. Give the bashing and especially the mod bias a fucking rest. You guys make the comments in these articles unreadable at any threshold.
Fork bomb. Brings *nix systems to their knees real fast.
I found gtkpod buggy too, but ever since I upgraded to whichever version is currently in Debian unstable, I haven't had any problems with it.
Imagine a D pad diagram at the top of the screen, taking up a small amount of space.One of those arrows would be highlighted, indicating which direction is selected. To go in that direction, press and hold the center button. To change your direction, simply rotate the scroll wheel.
Then the back and play buttons are the A and B respectively. The most comfortable way to play would be to hold the iPod with your left hand. Place your left thumb on play and your left index finger on back. Place your right index finger on the middle button, and use the scroll wheel with your right thumb.
Of course it's nowhere near as nice as a real gameboy, but it would DEFINITELY be playable on some games. Especially games that don't require all the controls at once.
Get the program EasyTag for Linux, or run it in Mac with dports or fink. If all your songs conform to a filename standard, you can use EasyTag to automatically id3 tag your whole collection.
It works the reverse too. You can have it automatically rename files based on id3 tags. And unlike iTunes method of doing this, you can actually pick the folder/filename layout instead of their crappy unchangeable default. It's a sweet app.
The iPod effectively has 5 buttons and a scroll wheel. Seems like a fine platform for a GB emu to me.
Besides, there are oogles of people out there who could do all their daily tasks on unix systems without a problem, in some cases better, and they just don't know it yet.